Further to my query last week, it appears the business I'm dealing with appended a temporary marquee to the side of its premises to temporarily increase the capacity of its restaurant for an event.
Does food served in the marquee still count as 'on-premises' for the purposes of establishing if it qualifies for the temporary hospitality rate, or should it be standard rated?
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I’d say yes as long as it’s, as you say, an extension of the normal restaurant activities.
Also +1 ... so long as:
"appended a temporary marquee to the side of its premises" means just that (only a temporary expansion of area where tables are served with the same food from the same kitchens - i.e. no identifiable change in service or supply).
[If, for instance, the marquee had a separate barbecue/grilling station and its own menu - then it's a different facility].
Taking a slightly different tack.
Even if the marquee were classed as a 'different' or secondary premises, would that matter?
If it is a building, room, space, etc. that a restaurant operates from, then surely it qualifies as a premises and the reduced rate would be in point anyway?
My main concern is that the food is still prepared in the main kitchen. If, say, the marquee were at another location, say, a few hundred metres away, then my understanding is that it would become off-premises catering?
Wholly correct of course (you're the VAT expert not me) ... I managed to mangle a potentially relevant thought and then express it badly. Painful!
What I was trying to drive at was that if marquee could be construed as making a supply of catering (i.e. a separate event), then all supplies will be standard-rated (unless the catering is supplied on-premises, in which case it will benefit from the temporary reduced rate).
So two distinct issues:
* was the marquee an integral expansion or could it be interpreted as a separate event? - and
* even if it was a separate event, could the catering supply be treated as being 'on-premises'?
From the responses of OP below, my musings appear to have been unnecessary. C'est la vie!
Thanks folks. It's literally appended to the main trading premises, accessed through a wide door at the front of the restaurant which is sealed and watertight. Service provided in the tables in the marquee is identical to that provided in the main premises.
What was that case forty years ago ? A burger van on a racecourse treated the whole racecourse as the premises.
Or was it seafood in disposable containers? Lost on appeal, anyway.
"In Barry Herbert Cope [1981] STC 532 the appellant ran a mobile catering stall at various racecourses selling seafood in disposable containers. At each racecourse he paid a fee to the holder of the catering franchise. He maintained that where no seating was provided his supplies were zero-rated.
"The tribunal debated whether his stall or the racecourse was the premises on which the supply was made and consumed. It concluded that the supplies were made from one set of premises, the stall, and consumed in another, the racecourse. The appeal therefore succeeded.
"On appeal to the High Court this decision was reversed. The judge disagreed with the tribunal’s interpretation of premises but, more importantly, expressed the view that it was not necessary to invoke Note 3. The trader was supplying food for immediate consumption in connection with an event (the race meeting), and the supplies were per se in the course of catering and therefore standard-rated."