Federal regulators are seeking $500,000 in back wages and liquidated damages from a Pasadena eatery that allegedly withheld a portion of employee tips and used the money to fund business expenses.
A Dec. 28 complaint filed in federal court by the U.S. Department of Labor alleges Entre Nous French Bistro and owners Jean-Christophe Febbrari and Mathias Wakrat “knowingly and willfully” kept money that was rightfully owed to 18 workers.
The department’s Wage and Hour Division found the restaurant collected credit card and cash tips from customers, automatically deposited them in the employer’s business account and distributed only a portion of the tips to servers, food runners, waiters, hosts and bartenders through weekly Zelle wire transfers.
The investigation covered the period running from Jan. 13, 2020 through Jan. 12, 2023.
Investigators also said the restaurant misclassified several employees as independent contractors and didn’t keep accurate pay records.
Representatives with Entre Nous could not be reached for comment.
The department is seeking to recover about $250,000 in back wages and an equal amount in liquidated damages for the workers. It’s also asking the court to issue an injunction forbidding Entre Nous and its owners from future violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act.
Labor officials couldn’t reveal the average payout owned to each employee, as the matter is still in litigation. The amounts, they said, will be “specific to each worker and each shift they worked.”
“Illegal practices by restaurant employers such as Entre Nous French Bistro in Pasadena hurt employees and also law-abiding employers who face unfair competition due to the stealing of tips by unscrupulous employers,” said Marc Pilotin, regional solicitor of labor in San Francisco. “Customers expect — and the law requires — that tips go to employees, not their employer.”
Wage theft — whether it comes in the form of unpaid tip money, unpaid overtime or pay that falls below minimum wage — is a rampant problem. It costs American workers as much as $50 billion a year, according to an Economic Policy Institute report — an amount that surpasses all robberies, burglaries and motor vehicle thefts combined.
In July, the owner/operator of two LA-area Wingstop restaurants agreed to pay $667,414 in back wages and fines for allegedly underpaying 309 workers.
The settlement with Costa Mesa-based Far West Restaurant Group, LLC involved wage theft violations that occurred from 2017 through 2020 at the two independently owned and operated locations in East Los Angeles and Walnut Park.
An investigation by the Los Angeles County Department of Consumer and Business Affairs (DCBA) showed the company shorted employees by 25 cents to as much as $2.25 an hour during the four-year period when the county’s minimum wage rose from $12 to $14.25 an hour for businesses with 26 or more employees.
And a Santa Fe Springs food manufacturer in June was ordered to pay $650,000 in back wages to 26 delivery drivers who were misclassified as independent contractors and wrongly exempted from overtime pay as a result.
The April judgment by the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California also forbid Romero’s Food Products Inc. from engaging in future Fair Labor Standards Act violations.
That litigation followed an investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division which found the drivers were denied the required overtime rate when they worked more than 40 hours in a regular workweek. The investigation covered a period running from Oct. 16, 2017, through Oct. 15, 2022.
