Leisure & Hospitality

Facing rising costs, changing consumer behaviours, the cost-of-living crisis, staff recruitment issues and sustainability challenges, leisure and hospitality businesses are under pressure from all angles. For some, however, this brings opportunities.

Meeting these challenges head-on — whether by controlling costs, dealing with regulation, considering expansion or protecting your reputation and brand — is an unavoidable reality. With so much change afoot, you need a trusted legal partner that understands the landscape and has a track record of achieving results.

With experts in regulatory and compliance, real estate and employment law, we provide the full spectrum of legal services to the leisure and hospitality sector. Whether you operate a pub company, brewery, hotel or restaurant group, we can help you to address your key challenges now and prepare you for the road ahead.

Find out more about our services and experience below.

Discover our specialist services for breweries and beverages.

In this section

Our services & experience

Our services
Regulatory — including food standards, health and safety, licensing, data breaches and business crime and compliance.
Real estate — including planning, property and construction, development, disputes and litigation, portfolio management and asset management.
Employment — including the day-to-day handling of employee issues, resolving disputes, exits and settlement agreements, right to work, immigration law and business immigration issues. Our dedicated team handles volume employment tribunal work and compliance issues, including those relating to national minimum wage and HMRC investigations.
Intellectual property — including trade marks and protecting your brand and reputation.
Commercial—including trading agreements, terms and conditions, cyber security and data protection.
Corporate — including deal restructuring and mergers and acquisitions.
Our experience
We have a wealth of experience in helping clients in the leisure and hospitality sector to manage their legal issues.
Some examples include:
Pub business — supporting with all people-related legal issues including dealing with volume employment tribunal cases.
National restaurant chain — advising on national minimum wage (NMW) investigation involving uniform requirements for staff and successfully challenging HMRC’s position that there had been a TUPE transfer that made our client liable for historic NMW breaches and the accompanying ‘naming and shaming’.
National restaurant chain — providing ongoing advice on immigration-related queries, including changes to right to work requirements to address post-Brexit immigration and advice on changes to eligibility criteria for skilled workers following the candidate shortage within the hospitality sector post-Covid, as well as the use of frontier worker permits.
Food safety and allergens — providing representation in a case investigated by Trading Standards in which no further action was taken following written submissions being made at the outset of the case.
Multi-site operators — advising on property estates including lease renewals and managing issues with landlords.

Our clients include

Allocation of tips webinar

The way that tips, gratuities and service charges are to be distributed to employees is set to change in a major shake-up for leisure and hospitality businesses.

Watch experienced employment lawyer Lee Jefcott discuss all you need to know about the new employer obligations.

Watch here