The popular Austin bakery and beer garden Easy Tiger has issued an apology after accusations surfaced that the establishment withheld tips from its employees, a practice now under investigation by the Department of Labor. As reported by KVUE, the South Lamar location of Easy Tiger was found to have improperly included back-of-the-house staff in its tip pool program from August 2022 through August 2023, which is a violation of current tipping laws.
Former Easy Tiger employee Peaches Rose shed light on the issue during a KVUE interview stating, "I never really understood how we were getting paid to be quite fair, and there was a lot of like little things where they would cut corners, I think to, like, make it easier on them." Furthermore, the bakery has committed to conducting audits of their other locations to prevent future misallocations after the Department of Labor reviewed the faulty payroll records Easy Tiger said discrepancies caused by the aforementioned tip pool inclusion.
Amidst these revelations a former Easy Tiger employee Candace Medina, who worked across multiple locations, voiced frustration over the changing tipping protocols during an interview, "We went from you get personal tips to tip sharing, which became everyone getting tip share regardless of what they were doing," she said, according to a video by KXAN. It is alleged that hourly managers received tips which, according to labor attorney David Langenfeld, if true could constitute illegal activity under laws revised in 2020 stating that tips belong to the employees regardless of whether an employer pays the federal minimum wage or more.
The company has now revised its tipping practices to comply with Department of Labor policies and apologized through social media to its team "we are sincerely sorry, and we are implementing new policies to make sure this never happens again. Please know, we never intended to pay our employees less than they were entitled to from their hard work and commitment to you, our customers," Easy Tiger stated in a post sourced by KVUE. Nevertheless, the bakery is taking measures to address the issue, including recommitting to quarterly all-hands meetings to ensure any arising issues are promptly dealt with and employee concerns are heard and acted upon.
