UK Catering Workers Say They're Still Owed Wages Even After Winning Tribunal Cases

Sonia Garcia Monuz says she's owed £2,300 in final wages from Viking Catering Ltd, a Berkshire-based catering firm, after leaving the job in August 2025 following a string of disagreements with the owner.

"I just want my wages. It's my hard work. I just want what I'm owed," she told the BBC.

She's not alone. Joan Fullbrook and George Weal both worked for a separate catering company, Chef2Table Ltd, owned by the same Hampshire businesswoman, Martha Lindeque. Both say they're still chasing money they were legally awarded.

Winning in court didn't mean getting paid

Employment tribunal records reviewed by the BBC show Fullbrook won her case against Chef2Table Ltd over "unauthorised deductions" from her wages. The tribunal awarded her £1,498. She says she's never received it.

"I worked hard every day in that kitchen and that was how I was repaid. It makes me sick to be treated this way," Fullbrook said. She's now pursuing the money through the county courts, a separate and additional legal process required in England and Wales to actually enforce an unpaid tribunal award.

Weal, who was 21 when he started at Chef2Table, left the company after discovering the food delivery van he was driving was untaxed and uninsured, something he says he had no idea about and that "could have led to me losing my licence." Tribunal records show he was awarded £1,052 in January 2025 for unpaid wages. He says the company never paid.

"It was just really stressful. Especially for someone of my age," Weal said. "I had the backing of parents in that financial sense, but some people don't, and could end up in a really bad situation."

A wider problem, not just three workers

This isn't an isolated dispute. Acas, the UK's independent workplace conciliation body, says early conciliation cases involving unpaid wages rose roughly 17% between 2024 and 2025. Acas also reports that 49% of hospitality workers experience problems at work, nearly half the industry.

Hospitality is a low-margin, high-turnover sector, and that combination appears to be driving a lot of this. Workers in kitchens and catering vans often lack the savings cushion or legal know-how to fight a small employer that simply refuses to pay.

The real gap: enforcement, not the law itself

The legal process worked, at least on paper. Fullbrook and Weal took their cases to an employment tribunal and won. The system identified the wrongdoing and issued a judgment.

But a tribunal award isn't self-executing. If an employer refuses to pay, the worker has to go back to court, this time the county court, to enforce the judgment. That means more time, more paperwork, and often more legal cost for someone who is, as Fullbrook put it, working "to survive," not chasing "luxuries."

The enforcement framework presents a genuine problem that applies regardless of whether you think British employment law is too strict or too lax. A judgment nobody enforces isn't worth much. Small business owners facing genuine cash-flow problems might argue they simply couldn't pay on time. But nothing in the tribunal records or the workers' accounts suggests financial hardship on the part of the employer was ever raised as a defense.

What's missing from this account

The BBC's report is built entirely around the workers' side of the story. There's no on-record response from Martha Lindeque or from Viking Catering Ltd and Chef2Table Ltd addressing the specific allegations, no statement explaining why the tribunal awards to Fullbrook and Weal went unpaid, and no confirmation of whether either company disputes the £2,300 Garcia Monuz says she's owed. Companies House filings or insolvency records, which would show whether these firms have the assets to pay, aren't referenced either. Without that, it's impossible to know whether this is deliberate non-payment or a company genuinely unable to cover its debts.

Garcia Monuz has lodged a claim with Acas to try to recover her money, a step short of a full tribunal case. Fullbrook is now in county court seeking to enforce her existing award. Whether either recovers what they're owed, and whether Chef2Table Ltd or Viking Catering Ltd respond to the claims at all, remains unresolved.