A third of UK kids-eat-free offers end when the schools go back
Counted on 31 August from 4,374 verified UK venues carrying a live kids-eat-free or kids-eat-for-£1 offer.
1,582 of them — 36% — stop by 10 September, the first full week of the English school term. The number of restaurant groups running an offer falls from 325 to 264.
This happens every year and is almost never reported, because the lists families rely on are written during the holidays and not revised afterwards. The offers below are not being withdrawn quietly — most were always advertised as school-holiday promotions. The problem is that nothing tells parents when they end.
The offers ending
Named chains where every participating site stops. Dates are the first day the offer is no longer valid.
| Chain | Venues affected | Offer ends |
|---|---|---|
| Tesco Café | 315 | 1 September |
| Vintage Inns | 170 | 31 August |
| Pizza Hut | 151 | 2 September |
| Ember Inns | 149 | 4 September |
| Harvester | 137 | 4 September |
| Wagamama | 130 | 1 September |
| Slug & Lettuce | 60 | 1 September |
| Franco Manca | 50 | 31 August |
| Bill's | 47 | 1 September |
| ASK Italian | 34 | 6 September |
| Joseph Holt | 32 | 1 September |
| Honest Burgers | 29 | 31 August |
| Village Hotels Pub & Grill | 29 | 4 September |
| TGI Fridays | 28 | 6 September |
| Dobbies Garden Centres | 27 | 1 September |
| Upham Inns | 24 | 6 September |
| English Heritage | 23 | 31 August |
| Heritage Pubs | 19 | 31 August |
| Tonkotsu | 17 | 31 August |
| Comptoir Libanais | 16 | 1 September |
The offers that continue
Year-round offers, unaffected by the school calendar. These are the ones worth knowing about in September, and the reason the honest answer to “do kids still eat free?” is yes.
| Chain | Venues continuing |
|---|---|
| Morrisons Café | 343 |
| Pizza Express | 228 |
| Sizzling Pubs | 225 |
| Asda Café | 210 |
| Hungry Horse | 203 |
| Pausa Café (Dunelm) | 161 |
| Toby Carvery | 142 |
| Flaming Grill | 133 |
| Beefeater | 99 |
| Brewers Fayre | 85 |
| Stonehouse Pizza & Carvery | 80 |
| Zizzi | 79 |
| Prezzo | 73 |
| Tenpin | 59 |
| Bella Italia | 51 |
Method
Every venue in our directory is checked against the chain’s own published offer terms and re-checked on a 14-day cycle. A venue counts here when it is active, carries an offer whose published window covers the date, and is not excluded from it — the same three conditions that decide whether a venue appears on the site at all.
“Ending” means the published valid-to date falls before 10 September. “Continuing” means it does not. Figures are recomputed hourly from the live directory, so they will move as chains announce extensions.
What this does not show
- An offer ending is not a chain withdrawing. Most of these were advertised as school-holiday promotions from the outset, and several will return at October half-term.
- We count venues with a published offer window. A chain that quietly extends without announcing it will look like it stopped until we re-check.
- Independent restaurants are included in the totals but not in the tables, which name chains a reader will recognise. The long tail is real and unreadable as a list.
- Fast-food chains are outside our scope and are not counted at all.
Using this
These figures are free to quote with attribution to kidseatfree.co.uk. The underlying directory covers every venue behind these numbers, searchable by town — and if you need a regional breakdown or a cut we have not published, ask us and we will run it.
Counted 31 August. Method: how we verify offers.