The New York Restaurant Association supports an effort to legalize pooled tipping for workers at counter service restaurants, the head of the organization said Wednesday.
A new bill was introduced to clarify state labor law to fairly distribute tips to employees at counter service restaurants who earn at or above the minimum wage.
“We want to applaud Assemblymember [Angelo] Santabarbara for showing initiative in tackling a very complicated issue for our industry,” NYS Restaurant Association President & CEO Melissa Fleischut said in a statement Wednesday. “The modern hospitality industry is much different than when these laws were put in place and there is a strong need for additional clarity.”
Counter service restaurants have grown in popularity over the last 30 years. The current law is ambiguous as online orders and customers leaving general tips at the register change tipping culture, especially at counter service restaurants like Chipotle or an ice cream store.
“The rules for counter service, [like] Dunkin’ Donuts, Chipotle, is not really clear in the law what you can or can’t do,” Santabarbara told Spectrum News 1 on Wednesday.
The Rotterdam assemblyman sponsored the measure after the owners of Simone’s Kitchen, a counter service Mediterranean restaurant with locations in Schenectady, Albany and Greene counties, learned they weren’t allowed to pool tips to share with all workers behind the counter.
Bashir Chedrawee co-owns Simone’s Kitchen, and never dreamed pooling tips for workers behind the restaurant counters would violate state law.
“It’s a fair and equitable way to spread tips across the board,” Chedrawee said at his Schenectady eatery Wednesday.
State Labor Department officials recently informed Simone’s it had to stop pooling tips unless the state Legislature changes the policy in Albany. Current law is a grey area, but generally reserves tips at counter service businesses for employees who directly engage with customers, limiting which workers in an assembly line can get a share.
Santabarbara’s bill would not impact traditional tipped workers who wait tables.
“Those are under a different set of rules,” the assemblyman said.
If signed into law, businesses would have the option for pooled tipping, but it wouldn’t be mandatory.
It would be up to each business to determine the criteria to distribute tips to employees.
Chedrawee said if it becomes law, Simone’s would pool the tips each week and distribute to staff, excluding managers, based on the number of hours they worked.
“Say a team member works 10% of the hours that week, they get 10% of the tips,” he explained.
Chedrawee expects the steepest pushback to the proposal will come from the assumption the policy will affect restaurants with service tables, but the early support is giving him hope lawmakers could adopt the change next year.
“We’ve heard support from DOL about this as long as it’s put in a way that’s clear in a way there’s no confusion,” he said.
Santabarbara is working to find a state Senate sponsor and prioritize the measure.