A dispute over how tips are handled has been behind recent closures and service disruptions at Capitol Hill restaurant Barrio.
Larry Kurofsky, head of the Heavy Restaurant Group behind the 12th Ave Mexican concept, confirmed nine employees were fired last week after walking out over the issue.
A widely shared message on social media described the group sacking as a harsh response to what employees said was planned to be a temporary walkout by the restaurant’s “front of house” staff including servers and bartenders.
CHS has reached out but has not been able to speak with any of the employees fired in the dispute.
The decision to fire nine workers cost Barrio a brunch and two days of business
According to Kurofsky, issues over tips and wages arose late last year as Barrio joined the rest of the Heavy locations in transitioning out of a 50/50 split in its tip pool between front of house positions and back of house positions in the kitchen and supporting the busy restaurant. Kurofsky says Barrio adjusted its split to 80/20 late in 2021 favoring the front of house positions — a move putting it back in line with more typical distribution. During the pandemic, he said, it made more sense to split the pool with in-person dining limited and the reliance on takeout and delivery business.
Typically, venues will adjust hourly wages lower in conjunction with a tip increase to balance compensation. The new split and adjusted wages left front of house employees unhappy, a fact Kurofsky acknowledges Barrio and the Heavy Group are trying to address with its remaining 300 or so employees.
“Over the past several months our servers and bartenders have expressed their desire to have a greater share of the tips to our management team,” Kurofsky writes. “We respect their interest to have a higher income and we have been working on a creative solution that would increase their overall compensation, at the company’s expense, without negatively impacting the rest of the team.”
Kurofsky said he plans to have the new pay tier “introduced and implemented throughout all our restaurants by the end of July.”
“I’m disappointed about this happening,” Kurofsky said. “I believe strongly in our model and paying people as much as we can.”
Barrio’s rocky transition out of the pandemic related to wages and tips isn’t an isolated issue. In February, a dispute roiled E Union’s Bateau as workers at the Renee Erickson joint after a switch to a new payroll processing service resulted in overpayment on tips to employees and some bad blood as the steak joint requested the overpayments be paid back.
Meanwhile, at Barrio, there will be consequences for the now 14-year part of the Capitol Hill dining scene. Friends and supporters have spread the message about the decision to fire the workers with some calling for a boycott of the restaurant and its siblings.
Kurofsky said he doesn’t predict any more closures or service disruptions going forward and said he thanked the staff who stepped in to help from other Heavy locations.
UPDATE: Here is the full statement from Kurofsky:
We changed the FOH and Kitchen tip share split from 50/50 coming out of the pandemic to our current 80/20 tip share in December of 2021.
Over the past several months our servers and bartenders have expressed their desire to have a greater share of the tips to our management team. We respect their interest to have a higher income and we have been working on a creative solution that would increase their overall compensation, at the company’s expense, without negatively impacting the rest of the team. This new pay tier will be introduced and implemented throughout all our restaurants by the end of July.
The demands the 9 servers and bartenders presented last week would not result in an additional cost to the company, however it would increase the portion of the tips to bartenders and servers by significantly reducing the share of tips to the support staff and kitchen team. If these demands were met all our hosts, bussers, food runners, expeditors, line cooks, dishwashers and prep cooks would be negatively impacted. We do not believe this move is fair, respectful, or appropriately values everyone working in the restaurant. Further, we believe in pay equality and the traditional wage gap in the restaurant industry needs to be narrowed and our tip share models supports these values.
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I’m unclear about what their grievance is. The story says they transitioned out of a 50% split to an 80% split for the FOH. Do the FOH folks want more than 80%?
I’ve tried to clarify above.
Typically, venues will adjust hourly wages lower in conjunction with a tip increase to balance compensation.
The minimum in Seattle for tipped employees is 15/hr right? There’s only so much to move that down in comparison to the archaic federal with 2.25 tipped.
This could still be a little clearer. Were wages lowered when the tip pool was increased? The Barrio response is VERY vague on that as well. None of it makes sense.
Hi, to clarify the tip pool is currently split 80% to FOH employees, 20% to the Kitchen employees and it’s split based off hours worked. The employees that left were demanding that we end the tip pool and pay them the majority of the tips; with tipping out a small % to the hosts, bussers, expeditors, dishwashers, prep cooks and line cooks. This would negatively impact our kitchen and support staff and goes against our belief in pay equality for all members of our team. Currently, with the tips that are being pooled + hourly wage, we can confidently say that all employees are paid between $22-45 an hour. Also, to clarify minimum wage in Seattle is $15.75 and we do not pay any of our employees less than this an hour.
Personally, I can add that I’ve worked for HRG for several years, in just about every position in the FOH and this structure is the best I’ve seen for all employees. The disparity between kitchen employees (the clear backbone to our industry and why people come to dine with us) and the FOH is much better with this model. HRG cares greatly for it’s employees well-being, provides benefits, free food, and genuinely cares about each employee. I’ve seen so many examples over the years, where the owner has bent over backwards to help employees in need. Making sure the employees are paid fairly and can make a livable wage is something he not only believes in, but is continuously making adjustments to benefit all employees.
The problem here is tip pooling. If I’m serving Jack who comes in and tips me a $20 for exemplary service, that $20 should go to me and those working with me at the time. It’s a TIP, not the restaurant’s wage fund.
Studies have shown time and again that better tipping does not lead to better service, and better service does not significantly affect tipping. Tip amounts tend to be more influenced by the gender, age, race, and perceived attractiveness of the server.
Even if the service quality DID impact tip amounts in any significant way, there are a lot more people involved than your server, so they deserve to be rewarded for their hard work. It’s very self-centered to think otherwise. I personally care more about the quality of the food than anything my server will do. A tablet replaces them pretty easily.
Honestly a tablet is preferred. 9 times out of 10, tipping culture IMO makes for a worse experience for me. I did not come to a restaurant to know your name or make small talk with you. I came to enjoy the food and drink on offer. It’s so clear how hard some servers ‘try’. Food is all that really matters. It’s always the food, company, ambiance etc. It’s a small wonder why I vastly prefer dining in Europe.
Yup they need to stop stealing from tipped workers to subsidize the pay of back of the line staff. It’s wrong and sick 🤢
Yes that what it seems like. They wanted more money from the tip pool taking money directly from the BOH. WHAT!? They work so much harder than FOH!!! Let them walk!!! BYE! Poached.com go get you another crappy server job. Leave the BOH with some tip money you greedy bartenders and servers! “We don’t make enough to live on so let’s take from our other employees until we feel better about ourselves.” 😔
They moved to 80/20 and then cut the salary of the FOH workers; likely the extra tip money didn’t make up for it. Bario is saying they wanted the BOH money but probably they just want more salary on top of tips.
Good luck finding replacements.
Spending the last 40 plus years in food and beverage tip pooling is a way for management or owners to not pay a fair wage. I fully support these people who have walked out. Back of the house does not have to have a MAST permit nor do they have to have their job on the line for over serving or underage drinking.
I hope you’re retired. This comment is inherently racist and classist, in an industry where BOH workers are often immigrants and POC. All workers in WA have to pass Food Handlers. One could also argue servers don’t put their body on the line using knives and working around hot stoves for long hours, does that make a server less worth equal pay?
Definitely not racist.
Stop dividing the country with your temerarious claims.
Do you want to know what’s inherently racist and classist? Not paying your employees a living wage so that they need to take tips from the FOH workers, who also aren’t paid a living wage. Start blaming the workers and put the blame firmly upon ownership who is screwing bot FOH and BOH
Define “living wage”? In your opinion, what number should that be?
Your right, they just have to ensure customers and employees do not get food poisoning by cross contamination. Not to mention working on an inherently dangerous environment, heat, knives, open flame, mixers, greasy floors, and many other pieces of equipment. Proper food rotation ensuring monetary loss to the business. Usually receiving deliveries and movement of heavy cases. Tapping and moving kegs. Proper dishwashing. No dishes, no service. Oh yea, and being blamed for the mistakes of the server forgetting a an item on a ticket, cold food thats been left in the window to long, etc. If the dining room was removed and food served from a window the business could still operate and make money without the server labor cost. Most cooks, chefs BOH workers have higher education/degrees in the culinary field as it is considered skilled labor because of the inherent risk both to the customer and employees.
Tell me you’ve never worked in a kitchen without telling me you’ve never worked in a kitchen.
Typical whiny bartenders and servers. They always want more and will never be happy. The fact that the restaurant cannot exist without the kitchen, hosts, dishwashers, should show how selfish these entitled brats are. I am disgusted by their behavior and the fact that they can play the victim card while the others struggle.
Bartenders are not and will never be more important the the rest of the staff and the fact that they do not want to share is gross.
The only reason we are even talking about this is because they did not get their way and they want to try and do the typical thing that brats do…. They throw a temper tantrum. Oh no, poor babies are only making a minimum of $35 an hour, that must be such a struggle.
So take 20% of what you make and give it to your coworkers. It’s disgusting you don’t want to share. Servers and bartenders make min wage and rely on tips they make to pay bills. The burden shouldn’t be on them to pay the kitchen staff an adequate/living wage. Ask just about any FOH staff and they wouldn’t hesitate to throw down money for the kitchen. The problem is when the restaurant starts to take more and more of YOUR money to pay wages they don’t want to pay out of THEIR money. And yes servers and bartenders are whining brats but the burden should fall on the owners.
PS – bussers, expo, food runners, hosts have always been tipped out positions so Heavy Group’s argument on that is bs. Pay gap, fair, equality. Pay your workers!!!!
I think you are missing the point.
Heavy is not taking anything or paying anyone less. Meaning they take ZERO of the tips.
Harvest vine restaurant has always split their tips 50/50, are you going to stop going there now?
Yup I don’t support stealing from your workers and places with tip pools have half hearted service at best
How many people go to a restaurant for food, and how many go for the waitstaff? When a customer leaves a tip, do they think, the food was horrible. Cold and overcooked, it took forever to arrive. But the person that brought it was friendly and professional, so I will leave a 20% tip, since I mostly (80%) go to restaurants for the service.
+1
FOH workers are notorious for being uppety and thinking they are more valuable and work harder then BOH. I’ve seen it for years and in the high end restaurants BOH are working their butts off and in some restaurants don’t even get a share of the tips.
Sounds like you have never worked in food service. Why don’t you go back to programming?
Wrong.
I have been in this industry for decades.
I know bartenters that can’t change their kegs and rely on kitchen staff to do it making $900 Fri/Sat tips. No sympathy, theres a reason they bartend/serve, its easy money.
It’s not easy money- your usually working your a** off in stressful situations. Many times your drink mixing ability, charisma, and personality is the draw for many of these places. Not only that, but your solely responsible for making endless, serious decisions that directly affect the well being of the business not to mention being responsible for your till coming out even and the business’s money. Why would a person that’s making a business money hand over fist- with it’s largest margins- sacrifice time to change a keg if there’s a line of customers paying 20 dollars a pop waiting for a drink? You don’t leave that money in limbo while changing a keg out- that makes zero sense. Most bartenders don’t make 900 bucks a night either- that’s ridiculous. If they are, then the business is making a ton of money which is paying many people’s salaries. I bartended for 5 years and never came close to that- though it wasn’t at an elite place. Also, there’s no guarantee Mon-Thur are going to bring you in a haul either, or the weekend. Sometimes you score- sometimes you get the shaft. On a side note- I used to carry my own kegs downstairs and change them myself cause I had no other help. I also was also in charge of collecting money from hourly pool tables, checking in guests and taking reservations for the hotel upstairs, and any other immediate issue while being responsible for everyone else in that room. If your a kitchen worker and want to be a bartender then make your own move, otherwise except your guaranteed wage and get to work.
I knew those bartenders, too. I was an untipped dishwasher who usually had to change the kegs which were stacked three high. You ever try to lift 1/2 bbl keg up onto a shelf? Not easy or safe. The top shelf was only 1/4 or smaller, at least.
Being ignorant of exactly how finances work in the food industry, but how about paying people a real wage, and do away with tips entirely? Is it really that hard? Can someone explain why progressive Seattle hasn’t started to move in this direction?
The size of tips are typically dependent on how well the FOH server performs, so to me it’s weird that they are being shared with BOH. The fact that they are shared shows that the restauranteur is screwing both areas with shit wages.
These people arguing against waiters claiming tips are morons. It was never a FOH vs BOH argument. BOH, especially cooks, typically receive substantially more guaranteed pay an hour/salary. Waiters get paid minimum wage and are dependent on their hustle to make up for the disparity and tables to begin with- they get no guaranteed money (sometimes they score and sometimes they get stiffed). Its not about one job being more worthy then another. When I worked as a waiter and bartender for years- we gave zero money to the BOH, especially as a bartender. The owners seem to want to put the onus on increasing waiters per hour pay instead of increasing the BOH pay cause they can weasel more tip money from servers.
Progressive Seattle or I should say Washington already moved in that direction. Servers in Washington use local minimum wage laws not the federal minimum. The servers in this case start at $15+ per hour instead of the federal $2+ per hour. They make bank compared to the average American server and considerably more than most similar work in their area.
I can’t speak to all of Heavy’s restaurants but Meet the Moon and Barrio have both been shit shows since reopening.
We never order takeout from Barrio because they always manage to mess something up. Eating at the restaurant something is wrong easily 1/3 of the time. If that’s what FOH is regularly dealing with I’m not surprised to hear they’re unhappy with the split.
Also, they neglected to turn off their online ordering one of the random days they closed because they didn’t have staff. So ordered my meal and pop over at my confirmed time to find the door locked, lights off, tables stacked, etc. Poor form.
Meet the Moon is just wildly inconsistent. One week the scramble is made with an egg and a half and the next week they’re channeling Beth’s. I don’t think any of the FOH from before the pandemic stayed on, so there’s been a significant learning curve. Not sure how well Heavy has supported training because it’s definitely lacking.
There have been tendrils of poor management seeping through for a while now. We’ll see if they manage to get their shit together.
Why not just, idk, stop tips altogether, raise menu prices and actually pay a living wage to all employees? A crazy idea, I know. Bottom line is tipping has been, always will be a way for employers to pass the buck of paying their workers to their customers.
The way this article is written I would say the servers and bartenders look really selfish. They want more than 80% of tips? How would that affect everyone else who isn’t a server or bartender? I would agree with Kurofsky that it would negatively impact the rest of the staff, which is not fair. And how does hourly wage affect both FOH and BOH in addition to tips??
It has been a while. In the past, the typical kitchen staff salary was greater than that of the front of the house staff. I would have to know more to be sure. However, handling the public and organizing to serve with a smile and good grace has a lot to do with the customer’s decision to tip. On the other hand, kitchen staff should be paid fairly, as should the wait and bar staff. I tend to lean toward siding with the staff when these things happen. I am suspicious when employers collect the tips to distribute as salary that they are using them as adjustments to paying lower salaries.
I’m with the restaurant owners here.
Supporting tip culture is such a joke
Working as a “front of house” employee, while challenging at times, does not require any specialty skills (like a cook has, for instance) or educational degree. Now that they are earning a minimum of $15/hour, plus significant tips, they are doing quite well. It’s hard to support their constant demands for more, more, more.
I’m typically very supportive of workers fighting for better wages, however unless there is something missing in the article it seems like changes were already being made to give the front oh house staff an increased share of the tips at the expense of the BOH staff. Did they want the BOH totally cut out? Or were there deep cuts to their hourly wages that weren’t communicated here?
Barrio is a terrible restaurant to work for. As someone who has worked in the restaurant industry for 20 years and has worked at Michelin starred restaurants and famous establishments this restaurant was one of my worst experiences in my professional career.
Terrible management all around. Terrible working environment.
Im confused. I can understand tip sharing during the pandemic, but when I was a waiter/bartender I kept my tips. I was paid a lower wage then everyone else and used my skills as a waiter/bartender to secure a better bottom line for myself. It sounds to me that the restaurant owners are using the servers tip money to pay their back end employees instead of paying them a better wage. So in essence the owners are actually stealing money. Dont blame waiters for walking out and I wouldnt support those listed restaurants, either.
all of this just makes for a stronger argument to do away with run-away tip culture…just pay people a decent wage, end of discussion. Customers end up paying about the same amount in the end, all the tip culture does is shift the burden away from employers. I know Ivar’s tried this a few years ago, but then retreated back to the accepted traditional way of doing things. What a shame.
I think I’m missing a piece. I get the tips going 80/20 FOH/BOH as that’s pretty standard. However, BOH needs to be compensated for that as wages have gone up since the pandemic quite a bit. Is Heavy not increasing BOH wages?
I wish that all restaurants would just increase their prices such that they can pay all of their employees fair, equitable, living wages. Eliminate the tip line. It should not be up to the discretion of the diner whether the workers are reasonably compensated.
I prefer when a restaurant is upfront and says “our menu prices represent the true cost of this dining experience.” or even when they say, “we apply a 20% gratuity that is split x and y to foh and boh.”
I prefer that too, but worst of all are the places that say their prices are all-inclusive but keep the tip line anyway. One or the other, please.
I agree with Gregph. In Germany, you pay the price on the menu. Here in Seattle, you pay one third more than what was printed (20% tip plus 10% tax). That is incomprehensible.
I think BOH works way harder and have more pressure than the FOH, I have worked at the restaurant business as FOH and I always supported a 50/50 tip Pool.Being fair makes the work environment way better.
The burden falls on the employer. The FOH should not have to contribute to the BOH wages or vice versa. I used to enjoy having a drink there. Most times I have ordered food the order has been wrong or missed altogether. To me that says management is not giving that team enough training and support. I also agree with the person who gets a tip from a customer for great service should be able to keep it.
This place is overpriced and to treat their workers like this is horrible! I don’t see them staying open for business
This is funny! A group of staff walk off, present an ultimatum for their return, and the owners decide to accept their job abandonment. This group is no loss. They have learned a life lesson – give someone a choice as they did and do not be surprised if they choose one you don’t like.
They are not entitled to unemployment having quit. Life will go on for all. This was a zero sum game for all. The total hourly salaries were not changing. The front of house staff were just wanting to move the remaining 20% tips from the back of house to themselves. The owners did not agree. That settles it.
There is no injustice that I can identify. There is caring demonstrated for employees and behaving with integrity – which those who walked off their jobs did not demonstrate. I am all in for this restaurant and the others owned by the Heavy Group.
Super gross company. I will never support a company that takes tips from servers to subsidize staff pay. Pay Your kitchen staff well give your servers the tips that they work for. This equality of pay that the owner believes in is b*******. Every company I’ve ever interacted with that went to a pooled tip system created a system of inequality where the hard workers were no longer rewarded for their hard work slackers were rewarded with the hard worker’s tips. The incentive to do a good job disappears behind just showing up and putting in your time. This restaurant management company is stupid. Thier ceo should be fired and barrio should be boycotted. Pooled tips need to go pay all your workers well and stop stealing from tipped workers to subsidize the pay of untipped workers.