Could the trend for ‘pay-what-you-can’ restaurants save the hospitality industry?

The restaurant industry is facing some of its toughest challenges, but could paying what you think a meal is worth, as well as what you can reasonably afford, be its salvation? The owners of The Long Table think so and tell Emma Henderson why their radical approach offers a refreshing vision for us all

Food for thought: The Long Table in Stroud, which opened in 2018, has a unique way of doing things (Hatty Francis Bell)

One lunchtime in January 2023, Laura Cammish was joined at The Long Table by Clare Pitman, where they chatted and ate together. Once strangers, they were brought together by a new restaurant concept and now meet every week not only to have lunch, but also to play table tennis. But it’s not just friendship they struck up.

After Cammish shared her story of being without permanent accommodation and suffering a serious back muscle injury, which meant she had very limited mobility and couldn’t work, Pitman said: “I think I can help with that, I’m a cranial osteopath,” and offered her treatments at a pay what you can rate, replicating The Long Table’s business model.

The Long Table restaurant, set inside Branscombe Mill, just outside Stroud, is the brainchild of co-founders Tom Herbert, a fifth-generation baker, and Will Mansell, and began in 2018.