Frankie Rowland’s Steakhouse Maintained Unlawful Tip Pool, Servers Claim

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Frankie Rowland’s Steakhouse is staring down a lawsuit filed by three former servers who allege they were required to participate in an unlawful tip pool that deprived them of proper wages.

According to the complaint, the plaintiffs worked at the Roanoke, Virginia restaurant for an hourly rate of $2.13 plus tips. The workers accuse the restaurant of maintaining a tip pool in which it improperly rounded down each server’s share to the nearest dollar and withheld a portion of these contributions to be used for the defendant’s own purposes.

The suit charges the restaurant violated federal labor law by not allowing servers to retain all gratuities and using a percentage of the tip pool to cover other business expenses, including the payment of non-tipped employees.