Restaurant chain paid workers below minimum wage and kept tips in Florida, feds say

An investigation revealed 100 employees were underpaid while working for a sushi burrito fast food chain based in northern Florida, federal officials say.

Kazu Sushi Burrito kept a portion of customer tips left for its workers and paid some employees below the hourly, federal minimum wage rate of $7.25 an hour, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. This occurred at four of the chain’s Jacksonville restaurants and a fifth location in St. Johns.

Additionally, the same employees who were paid less than minimum wage weren’t paid for overtime when they worked more than 40 hours in a week, officials said.

Now Kazu Sushi Burrito has paid its workers $215,190 in back wages they were owed after violating the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Labor Department announced in a Feb. 21 news release.

McClatchy News contacted Kazu Sushi Burrito for comment on Feb. 22 and didn’t immediately receive a response.

“Too often, restaurant industry workers are victims of wage theft by their employers,” Wildalí De Jesús, the DOL’s Wage and Hour Division director of its Orlando office, said in a statement. “These workers depend on every dollar they earn to provide for themselves and their families.

“There is no excuse for employers to intentionally deny these hard-working people their lawfully earned wages.”

The case comes after a separate Labor Department investigation found an ice cream franchise illegally kept more than 100 employees’ tips in Panama City Beach, McClatchy News previously reported. The company was ordered to pay $169,638 in back wages.

Employees can discover if they’re similarly owed back wages from their employer through the Wage and Hour Division’s search tool.

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