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CABER COFFEE

T A X E D T O T O A S T
TAXED TO TOAST……

Caber Coffee MD Findlay Leask
has some strongly brewed

words for those taxing the
hospitality industry in Scotland.

I was recently invited by hospitality
customers of Caber Coffee’s, alongside a
broad selection of other cafes,
restaurants, fish & chip shops and more,
to meet with Andrew Bowie MP to ask for
help as business owners desperately
search for ways to survive in an ever-more
challenging marketplace.

January saw another spate of closures in
Aberdeen alone and this feels like the
start of a tsunami. Why? Because in a
sector that has, for a long time, struggled
to be profitable, the latest minimum wage
and NIC increases leave virtually no net
profit.

From raw ingredients to energy and rates, Findlay Leask, Caber Coffee
the North East hospitality trade is being
bled dry. The sector has always been
disproportionately and unfairly penalised VAT is such a specific issue for hospitality
by VAT rules, but the precedent set post- because, unlike most other industries,
COVID, and by many other European many hospitality businesses take zero-VAT
countries, of implementing a specific VAT rateable raw ingredients and convert
rate for hospitality, could be actioned them into full VAT-qualifying meals. That
immediately. toastie you ate at lunchtime in your

favourite cafe? There’s no VAT on the
purchase of the bread or cheese, but in
the process of heating it up it becomes
VAT qualifying to the tune of 20%. It is
“the Toastie Tax” as Andrew described it.

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MAR/APR. 2026 | ISSUE 47