UK greets the euro with mixed feelings

The arrival of the euro has met with a mixed response from the UK's restaurateurs.

City Centre Restaurants' chief executive Andrew Guy said last week that although updating cash tills was relatively straightforward, the group has only adapted them to accept euros at its restaurants in major tourist destinations such as central London, Edinburgh, Bath, Oxford and Cambridge.

Guy said the group was considering using a euro rate fixed weekly or monthly, depending on the volatility of the exchange price. He said: "We don't want to make money from the euro's introduction, but we don't want to lose money either." The group had no plans to accept the euro at its restaurants outside major tourist spots.

Stephen Crampton, European Union adviser at the Consumers' Association, said that since the UK is not a member of the European Monetary System, those who chose to accept euros voluntarily were free to set their own sterling-euro exchange rate, but he added that it would be short-sighted of pubs and restaurants which rely on repeat business to profit from the new currency by hiking the exchange rate. He said that consumers should check how the exchange rate on offer compared with that in banks and bureaux de change.

At the 250-year-old Old Fleece Inn in Rooksmoor, Gloucestershire, manager Ian Fairbairn has fully embraced the new currency, despite having very few foreign customers. He spent £6,500 on new tills programmed to convert prices into euros. The three customers who have so far paid in euros have been British.

Fairbairn types the exchange rate quoted in a newspaper into the tills each morning. Although he would like to give euro-paying customers change in euros, he said that no high-street bank or travel agency could provide euro coins. The 70-seat restaurant has an annual turnover of £500,000.

Source: Caterer & Hotelkeeper magazine, 10-16 January 2002