The United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida recently held that the inclusion of kitchen chefs in a restaurant's tip pool invalidated the pool in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act.

Tip pools must only include customarily tipped employees, and a critical component of determining which employees fit that category is the extent of an employee's customer interaction. The court concluded that the restaurant's kitchen chefs should not have been included in the tip pool because their engagement with customers was incidental, limited only to cases where a customer had a complaint or asked to compliment the chef. The determination of appropriate damages was left to trial. Read more.