Chili’s Restaurants Sued for Requiring Servers to Tip Out Expediters

Chili’s policy of requiring servers to share their tips with expediters has been challenged in a federal court class action lawsuit. According to the wage theft lawsuit, Chili’s locations in New Jersey, Delaware, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio forced their servers to split tips with expediters. Expediters are individuals who generally work at or near the kitchen area traying food orders for pick-up by servers and who do not interact with restaurant customers. The lawsuit alleges that Chili’s forces waiters and waitresses who regularly take orders and actually serve the restaurant’s customers to share their earned tips in a pool with expediters who do not interact with the customers at all. As a result, a percentage of the tips customers leave intended for their servers end up in the hands of the food expediters with whom customers neither communicate nor likely ever see. The lawsuit claims this illegal tip sharing policy was uniformly applied throughout the forty-six Chili’s locations owned and operated by Quality Dining, Inc. The workers claim that as a result of this company wide policy, the restaurant has forfeited its right to take a tip credit under the Fair Labor Standards Act.