Maru Restaurants Accused of Illegal Pay Practices

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Seven operating companies and an individual owner of Maru restaurants have been named as defendants in a former employee’s collective action that takes issue with the restaurants’ pay practices. The plaintiff claims she worked at Maru as a server and was required to participate in an illegal tip pool from which non-tipped employees were compensated – an alleged violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act’s tip pool requirements.

According to the complaint, the defendants unlawfully withheld approximately half of servers’ tips and disguised them as a “service charge” on customers’ bills. The suit claims servers were required to inform customers that they should tip 10 percent less than they normally do because a service charge would automatically be applied to their bill and distributed among kitchen staff, other non-tipped employees, and their server. This practice, the complaint says, essentially resulted in servers having to “supplement the income” of non-tipped employees while being paid a below-minimum tip-credited rate.