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AI review-response assistant that works on Google, TripAdvisor, OpenTable and TheFork. Learns your venue voice from every manual reply. 5 free AI responses to try.
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BOOTEEK AI — LAUNCHING JUNE 2026
Backing the venues that give young people their first job.
Hiring young has never been more expensive — or more important. We’re on the side of the independent restaurant AND bar owners doing it anyway.
Install the free Chrome Extension
Free to start — five AI review responses, no card needed.
Built around the platforms that decide who gets found
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Hiring young got harder — and it isn’t your fault.
Three changes landed on top of each other. None of them are about how you run your venue — they’re policy, and they fall hardest on the entry-level roles that give a young person their start.
The wage to hire an 18–20-year-old
More than doubled since 2015 — from £5.30 to £10.85 an hour from April 2026, an 8.5% jump this year alone.
+0.0%in 2026
Source: Low Pay Commission / gov.uk, 2026
Employer National Insurance
The threshold was cut from £9,100 to £5,000, pulling around 774,000 more hospitality workers into contributions — about £1bn of new cost.
0kmore workers
Source: UKHospitality, 2025
Under-18s and the evening trade
Under-18s are barred from the restricted period — usually 10pm to 6am — and capped at eight hours a day. That rules them out of the core evening shift.
0pmhard stop
Source: Working Time Regulations 1998 (Acas)
Why this is bigger than one rota
1.25m
young people could be out of work or training by the early 2030s
£125bn
the cost of that lost potential, every year
#1
hospitality is the UK’s biggest youth employer and a key driver of social mobility
The first jobs independent restaurants AND bars offer are exactly the rungs the country is short of. This needs fixing at the top. Until it is, here’s help you can use now.
Source: Milburn Review via The Guardian / The Independent, May 2026
The help, made concrete
The government will help you afford it
Hiring a young apprentice can mean £0 training, £0 employer National Insurance, and up to £5,000 in stackable government cash. Try a scenario, then get a free, ready-to-post job advert that finds great young people on potential, not a CV.
£1,000cash incentives · +£2,000 more from Oct 2026
£0 training (100% funded)£0 employer NI (under 25)
Young Apprentice Paymentapprentice 16–18 at start · now£1,000
SME Hiring Incentive · from Oct 2026non-levy SME, apprentice 16–24 · 1 Oct 2026£2,000
- No guarantee of funding — booteek maximises the ease and completeness of your claim; the decision rests with the training provider, DfE or DWP.
- Cash is not paid up front: the first instalment is typically triggered around day 90, then routes department → training provider → you — realistically 110–130 days from the apprenticeship start before the first money lands.
- £0 employer National Insurance applies when the apprentice is under 25, on an approved apprenticeship standard, and earns under £50,270 a year.
What a great Commis Chef actually needs
Kitchen · backroom
enthusiasm81%teamwork70%reliability66%cleaning / hygiene66%problem-solving59%multitasking53%cooking interest53%time management47%
How a young person proves it — without a CV
The booteek lens — life experience, not qualifications.
- cooking interestCooked for your family or younger siblings when your parents were out? That's real kitchen interest — no chef's whites needed.
- cleaning / hygieneAre you the one who keeps the kitchen tidy at home? Do you actually like washing up?
- problem-solvingWhen something burns or runs out mid-cook, do you sort it? That's initiative under pressure.
- teamworkDo you muck in when everyone's slammed — without being asked?
Free
This checker
Your funding + a tailored advert. You’re using it now.
Pro · Coming soon
Help you apply
The guided application + the role’s “what to look for” toolkit. Coming soon.
Coming soon
Concierge
We run the whole application for you. Coming soon.
No guarantee of funding success — booteek makes the claim easier; the decision rests with the training provider, DfE or DWP.
Launching June 2026
A two-minute look at what we’re building for you
The platform that helps independent restaurant AND bar owners develop the young people they hire — and prove what that team is worth.
Launching June 2026
booteek AI — launching June 2026
Get your independent restaurant or bar found by ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI. The Chrome Extension and our free GPTs are available to try today; the full platform opens in June.
booteek AI is the AI Visibility platform for independent restaurants and bars in the UK, Portugal and Spain. Full platform opens June 2026; Chrome Extension and three free ChatGPT GPTs available now. Source: booteek.ai, May 2026.
Help you can use today — free
Start with the free Chrome Extension. It’s the fastest way to feel what booteek does for your team and your visibility, before the full platform opens in June.
Available today
Try booteek for free while you wait for launch
The full booteek AI platform opens June 2026. These tools are free, live now — no signup, no card, no waiting.
FREE
Breo by booteek
Your venue’s digital health check in a ChatGPT conversation. Real Google Business Profile data, review patterns, competitor benchmarks and AI visibility — in one chat.
Open in ChatGPTopens in ChatGPTFREE
booteek Team Coach
Zone-aware wellbeing programmes for kitchen, bar, floor and management staff. The first AI coach that understands the difference between head-chef stress and floor-manager stress.
Open in ChatGPTopens in ChatGPTFREE
DOW GPT (Discovery)
—+ independent restaurants and bars across — cities in the UK, Portugal and Spain. Real review quotes, Hot Score rankings, no chains, no sponsored listings. Free to use.
Open in ChatGPTopens in ChatGPTWant to know where you stand right now?
A one-off Competitor Check shows how your venue looks to the AI assistants diners ask — and how the places nearby compare. No subscription to find out.
Don't want to wait? Buy now.
Get your Competitor Check today
A one-off report on your Google Business Profile, your reviews, your AI visibility and how you stack up against your top 5 local rivals. 60 seconds. PDF emailed.
Competitor Check
Report in 60 seconds
- Google Business Profile completeness score
- AI visibility check across ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI
- Your top 5 local rivals, by proximity and rating
- Concrete fixes ranked by effort and impact
On your side, in the day-to-day
You can’t change the wage floor or the NI threshold. What you can change is how much you get out of every young person you take on. booteek reads each team member’s real strengths and turns them into small, daily development — so a stretched owner can develop young staff without finding a spare afternoon.
- Team intelligence maps each person’s strengths to the work that matters
- Breo turns that into a short, doable development step for each shift
- The B.E.S.T. Score’s Employee Excellence makes the value of your team visible
- Helping you keep the young people you develop is the mission we’re building toward
What it looks like on a shift
- Spotteda quiet 18-year-old who’s brilliant at reading a table.
- One step this month“Take the next complaint table — I’ll back you up.”
- A few weeks onthey handle it solo, they stay, and the reviews start to show it.
Two minutes after a shift — not an annual review.
Life Skills & Talents
See your team the way booteek does
Every young person you hire is good at something specific — reading a table, staying calm in the weeds, making a regular feel like a regular. booteek maps those real strengths to the work that matters and turns them into small, daily development. Here’s how it works.
Reserve your spot
Join the June 2026 launch waitlist
Be the first to access the full booteek AI platform when it opens in June. Founding-100 invites go out first.
No spam. One launch email. Unsubscribe any time.
You’re the one still giving young people a start. We’re here for that.
Begin with the free Chrome Extension — the rest of the platform opens in June 2026.
Install the free Chrome Extension