Recently an Arkansas waitress was tipped $4,400 and was fired afterwards. Ryan Brandt found herself unemployed after receiving a $4,400 tip at Oven and Tap restaurant in Bentonville, Arkansas according to Today. Now the owners of the restaurant have explained their side of the story. “We did not know walking into this experience how much money and what this generous act really looked like,” Mollie Mullis, co-owner of the Arkansas restaurant told News 10.
On December 3, Brandt’s face after she and another server got the big tip to split. The servers waited on a group of 30-plus people that goes by the name the $100 Club because everyone tips $100 at the end of a meal. “I was told that I was going to be giving my cash over to my shift manager, and I would be taking home 20%,” Brandt said.
Brandt’s said she told the group she wouldn’t be able to keep her portion of the without splitting it with the entire restaurant staff, which she claimed she was firing.
Brandt and her lawyer have signed a release that permitted both owners to share why she was fired, however, they still said it wasn’t their place to comment. “The employee that was terminated was not terminated for retaining the tip. Due to the privacy and the respect of our employees, we do not discuss employee affairs,” Luke Wetzel, the restaurant’s other co-owner told the news station.
Wetzel and Mullis say their tip policy is clear. Six percent of bar sales go to bartenders, 2% of food sales go to the kitchen, and 1% of food sales go to server assistants. “That practice did not happen,” Wetzel said.
Brandt says the amount usually comes out of her paycheck, not from the cash tips she leaves with at the end of the night. Grant Wise, the organizer of the $100 Club, said he called ahead to ensure the restaurant was not a restaurant that pools tips.
Mullis disputes those claims. “They did not call ahead and ask about our tipping policy nor did they email,” she said. “Because of the customer’s request, we honored it and handed it out to the servers that they asked us to distribute it to.”
Brandt ultimately left with her cut of the cash, but she has been met with a cease-and-desist order from Wetzel and Mullis. The owners outside of their normal tip-out policy for support staff, pooling tips with everyone in the restaurant for larger parties is a common practice.
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