Celebrated Kansas City restaurant illegally shorted employees’ tips, wages: Lawsuit

A former server at Corvino Supper Club & Tasting Room is suing the upscale Crossroads restaurant, claiming wage and tip theft.

Krisda Siriwangchai filed a class-action complaint in February in the U.S. District Court of Western Missouri against Raven Concepts LLC, the company under which Corvino does business. His suit claims that the restaurant’s policies had the effect of paying tipped employees — servers, runners, hosts and bartenders — less than what they were entitled to under the law.

Corvino Supper Club & Tasting Room did not respond to a request for comment, but its attorney, Greg Ballew of Fisher Phillips LLP, denied the allegations in a court response filed last month.

Siriwangchai, a 2017 graduate of the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law, worked at Corvino from 2018 to 2022. He alleges violations of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act as well as wage-related and “unjust enrichment class” claims under Missouri law. Those include:

▪ Minimum wage violations. Like many restaurants, Corvino claims a “tip credit,” which means it is allowed to pay its tipped employees $6 per hour — half of the Missouri minimum wage of $12 per hour — so long as those employees’ combined hourly wages and tips meet or exceed $12 per hour. But, the lawsuit alleges, Corvino’s tipped employees were regularly required to “work substantial amounts of time on non-tip-producing activities,” such as polishing glasses, preparing linens, and performing end-of-night closing duties. As a result, those employees earned less than minimum wage while performing those duties, the suit states, and Corvino wrongfully claimed a tip credit for those hours worked.

▪ Overtime violations. For tipped employees who worked more than 40 hours per week, Corvino paid the customary “time and a half” in overtime wages — but, the suit alleges, calculated those wages based on a $6 per hour wage rather than the full $12 per hour. That meant tipped employees working overtime earned only $9 per hour instead of $18 per hour.

▪ Illegal tip pool. Tips earned at Corvino are contributed to a “tip pool,” which is then “administered by Corvino back to various individuals using a formula that factors in that individual’s Corvino-determined point rating and the number of hours worked,” according to the lawsuit. Some of those proceeds, Siriwangchai’s suit says, were then paid to ineligible non-tipped employees, such as managers and supervisors. “Corvino wrongfully kept and diverted for its own benefit employee tips in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act,” the suit states.

▪ Automatic gratuity “ruse.” In certain settings — for parties of six or more, for diners in its tasting room, and at private events — Corvino adds a 20% automatic gratuity to customers’ bills. Corvino “treats these automatic gratuities as income to the restaurant,” as opposed to tips for the employees who served them, the suit says. Corvino, the suit claims, “uses some of the income from the automatic gratuities for general expenses such as taxes and to pay the salaries of managers and the wages of non-tipped kitchen staff,” all at the expense of the tipped employees.

Though Siriwangchai is the sole plaintiff in the lawsuit, more than a dozen current and former Corvino employees have so far opted in to its Fair Labor Standards Act claims, meaning they are eligible for compensation if the court rules in the class’s favor.

Those employees are: Brett Branstetter, Lauren Goode, Phoenix Cartwright, Frida Lara-Nunez, Courtney Sanderson, Christopher Young, MaKayla Allen, Kelly Piper, Martha Ramirez, Lisette Palacio, Zachary Domville, Nathan Henry, Alfredo Acevedo, Shelby Shearon and Kelly Maziarka. A ruling on the conditional certification of the class is expected later this year, Tim Riemann, attorney for Siriwangchai, told The Star. The case is assigned to U.S. District Judge Gary A. Fenner.

Corvino Supper Club & Tasting Room has earned numerous food-world accolades since opening at 1830 Walnut St. in 2017. Chef Michael Corvino is a three-time James Beard Award nominee for Best Chef: Midwest, and the restaurant has been featured in Food & Wine, The New York Times and Eater.

Restaurant tip-pooling lawsuits like Siriwangchai’s are on the rise in recent years, though they’ve been more common at larger restaurant chains than smaller operations like Corvino.

“If you’re an owner, the best way to protect yourself from these lawsuits is to pay employees a cash wage that’s equal at least to minimum wage,” Riemann said.