Jeanne Weinstein v. 440 Corp., d.b.a. The Ridge Great Steaks & Seafood

Atlanta, Georgia employment law lawyer represented the Defendant on a Fair Labor Standards Act violation theory.



Jeanne Weinstein previously worked as a server at The Ridge Great Steaks & Seafood, operated by Stephen Campbell. The Ridge paid its servers and bartenders $2.15 per hour. So, to meet or exceed the $7.25 federal minimum wage, it had to supplement its employees' income with the tips they received each shift. The Ridge also guaranteed the hostesses, food runners, and bussers (i.e., the support staff) a flat hourly wage of $10.00: $2.15 from The Ridge and the remainder from the tip pool money collected from the servers and bartenders each night. The Ridge required all servers and bartenders to contribute 3% of their gross food sales to the tip pool, and those employees could retain any tips above the 3%. This case stems from what The Ridge did with that remainder.



If the tip pool failed to generate sufficient funds to fully compensate the support staff and the server trainees, The Ridge would supplement their wages itself. If the tip pool was more than sufficient to cover those employees, The Ridge required the remaining funds to be distributed to the bartenders who worked that night's shift. When there were extra tips, the server-manager on duty was responsible for collecting them and placing them in an envelope in The Ridge's safe. The server-manager was supposed to write on the back of the envelope the date of the shift, the amount of extra tips collected, and the names of the bartenders to whom the extra tips should be distributed. But the server-managers did not always follow this last step.



Sometimes, a server-manager would instead write that the extra tips were to be distributed to the "bar,” without naming a specific bartender. This ambiguity caused confusion among the staff. Compounding the confusion, The Ridge's server-managers, including Weinstein, did not consistently follow certain protocols to ensure the proper accounting of all tips. For example, The Ridge required server-managers to record all tipped employees' earnings USCA11 Case: 23-13807

on cash out records at the end of every shift. The records listed each server who worked that shift, their gross sales, their respective 3% tip share contribution, and a final tally of the total tip share amount deposited into that shift's tip pool. The records, however, were not always timely or fully completed at the end of each shift.



When server-managers left incomplete cash out records with the extra tip envelope in the safe overnight, Maureen Richards, The Ridge's bookkeeper, had to reconcile the extra tip distributions the following day. But Richards was not responsible for distributing extra tips in cash to the bartenders. Instead, Richards delegated that responsibility to the server-managers on duty each shift. To do so, Richards would note on a "Support Staff Tipshare Grid” which server-manager was supposed to distribute the extra tips to which bartender, and she would initial next to that note to show that she had received and accounted for the extra tips that were collected after the previous shift. Richards would then leave the grid on a clipboard outside the manager's office. The server-managers and bartenders were supposed to sign the grid when the extra tips were distributed and received, but they did not always do so.



This case began when the Plaintiffs filed a collective action complaint alleging that the Defendants violated the FLSA's minimum wage requirement. Some employees of The Ridge, such as Weinstein and Arica Lehan, consented to become party plaintiffs at filing. Other employees later opted in as plaintiffs, including Adelle Drake, Tanya Gonzalez, Charles Lewis, and Karla Schroth.

Judgment in favor of the Defendants.



Affirmed