La Cima Restaurants Facing Tipped Employees' Collective Action

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La Cima Restaurants, LLC, whose 15 establishments across six states do business under the Twin Peaks trade name, is the defendant in a proposed collective action that cites alleged Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) violations. The lawsuit’s two named plaintiffs claim the defendants failed to satisfy mandatory notice requirements of the FLSA’s tip credit provisions and failed to pay out at least the minimum wage. Additionally, the case alleges the defendant paid tipped workers the tipped minimum wage—$2.13 per hour— for off-the-clock time before shifts when no customers, and therefore no opportunity to earn tips, were in the restaurant.

The complaint then touches on the defendant’s allegedly illegal practice of requiring employees to purchase special work outfits to wear for roughly one week each month. The plaintiffs claim proposed collective members were never reimbursed for money spent on work-specific clothing:

“The outfits were not clothes that could be worn outside of work such as ‘snow bunny’ outfits; Christmas lingerie; St. Patrick’s Day lingerie; and ‘Sweetheart’ lingerie. The tipped employees were also required to purchase college and professional football themed t-shirts from Twin Peaks for football Saturdays and Sundays during the fall. Twin Peaks required the t-shirts to be cut up such that they could not be worn anywhere by at the restaurant during work. The costs of those clothing items were not reimbursed by Twin Peaks. As such, they drove the tipped employees’ pay rate beneath the minimum wage for the time periods they had to be purchased by the tipped employees,” court papers claim.