In the February order, Judge Wiegand eloquently declared, “It is undisputed that defendants did not chronicle the quantum of time plaintiffs and their fellow servers expended on side work each day or the specific side work tasks assigned.”
The Rise of the Collective
The narrative found its climax when, in August 2022, Judge Wiegand granted final approval to the opt-in collective comprising 405 servers who had once graced the halls of over two dozen Kings Family Restaurant locations. The judge discerned that a common thread ran through their experiences: the restaurant had systematically paid its servers less than the minimum wage, even though they claimed to have dedicated over 20% of their shifts to untipped work, ranging from culinary wizardry to silverware sorcery.
Within this intrepid collective were both current and former servers of Kings Family Restaurant. They had endured the bitter taste of wages below the $7.25 per hour minimum wage threshold, dating back to July 2017.
$250K Awards to Restaurant Servers : The Feud Begins
McDonnell initiated her suit in July 2020, casting a shadow of doubt over Kings’ payment policies. She alleged that Kings had violated state and federal wage laws, daring to siphon off tip credits from servers’ wages while lowering their hourly pay to a mere $3.45, all without a tip-earning workload to justify the credit.
