Leeds bistro Bavette saved by customers after £3,500 booking scam

Bavette, the award-winning neighbourhood bistro in Horsforth, has thanked customers for rallying around the restaurant after it was scammed out of more than £3,500 in a sophisticated three-month con.

The restaurant, which opened in February 2024 and was later named Best Local Restaurant in the UK by The Good Food Guide, had accepted a private hire request for what was described as an anniversary celebration.

The customer asked owners Clément Cousin and Sandy Jarvis if they could arrange a live band for the occasion, insisting the surprise meant he could not pay the musicians directly.

Clément told the BBC that the enquiry appeared genuine at first. The would-be customer asked Bavette to take payment for both the deposit and the band, explaining he did not want the charge to appear on his wife’s bank statement. The total was around £5,000.

Clément said: “We recommended a bank transfer. But he insisted on paying by card and even agreed to cover the percentage fee. The payment went through, the band sent an invoice immediately - everything looked legitimate.”

How the scam unfolded

Clément paid the £3,500 fee to the band, which he later discovered did not exist. The card payment, made through an American bank, was subsequently frozen and flagged as suspicious by Bavette’s card provider, Dojo, meaning the £5,000 never reached the restaurant.

Dojo contacted Bavette the next morning to query the large transaction, raising concerns about multiple red flags: no physical card, no

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in-person visit and a third-party involvement from the first email. Clément said that until that point, he had still believed the booking was real.

Because the restaurant had blocked all other bookings for the private event, Bavette was not only out of pocket but also faced an empty dining room and lost staff hours.

Clément added: “If we have an empty restaurant, we lose a big sum of money, but we also have a team of front of house, chefs and a kitchen porter - I would have had to cut their hours too.”

Bavette turned to Instagram with a last-minute appeal, offering a free welcome drink to anyone who booked for the now-vacant service. Within hours, the restaurant was fully booked again.

Clément said: “It’s been overwhelming, we received easily one hundred and fifty messages. We knew we had a strong community but the response was very touching. It shows there are still a lot of good people.”

The case has been passed to the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau for assessment.

Clément said he hopes Bavette can recover the lost money, but he also wants to warn other independent restaurants.

“One red flag was the insistence on using a credit card from the first email. Another was involving a third party. Obviously scammers evolve - there will be a new one every day. Because we are independent, maybe we are a bit more naïve. We got fooled, but we want to make sure no other business falls for the same thing.”

Written by abi kinsella

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