A hospitality boss has said the rising number of “dine-and-dash” thieves this year has forced her to start charging customers upfront.

Vicky Mallaghan, manager of No Monkey Business and Cafe Hope in Keswick, Cumbria, said she had decided to stop offering table service after seeing a spike in customers leaving without paying the bill.

She said it was having a financial impact on her businesses and was also very stressful for her staff.

“If we’re short-staffed and things are getting on top of us, we have to change our procedure,” she said.

“Now we don’t do table service, everyone has to pay before they get what they ordered.”

She told BBC Radio Cumbria while it was not a “massively regular occurrence”, there had been a noticeable increase during the cost-of-living crisis.

“I do put it down to that,” Ms Mallaghan said.

The trade body UKHospitality said a third of its surveyed members had experienced customers refusing to pay for their food.

“The other day someone drank half their drink, brought it back and said it wasn’t nice and I said ‘I’ll get you another one, that’s no problem’ and they said ‘no, I’ll just have a refund’,” Ms Mallaghan said.

“And it does sometimes make me think: ‘Did you just want half a drink? Did it quench your thirst?'”

She said she believed there had also been a cultural shift which resulted in people choosing not to pay.

“It does seem more acceptable that that’s happening, or if something’s not right, you think you don’t have to pay for it rather than compromising or negotiating over the situation,” Ms Mallaghan said.