{"id":908235,"date":"2026-09-24T19:52:13","date_gmt":"2026-09-24T19:52:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/908235\/"},"modified":"2026-09-24T19:52:13","modified_gmt":"2026-09-24T19:52:13","slug":"she-laid-us-all-off-local-diner-on-the-hook-for-unpaid-wages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/908235\/","title":{"rendered":"‘She laid us all off’: Local diner on the hook for unpaid wages"},"content":{"rendered":"

Financial woes forced a restaurant to lay off the majority of its staff last month <\/p>\n

The co-owner of a local restaurant says staff who were laid off last month will receive money owed to them for unpaid wages \u2014 but it remains unclear when that will happen.<\/p>\n

In August, Cravings Diner issued layoffs to approximately half a dozen employees working at the Market Mall establishment, leaving some staffers\u00a0wondering when they\u2019ll get their next paycheque.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Alexa Lewis was working as a waitress at Cravings Diner, which held a grand opening in June<\/a>, until she received a layoff notice via text message from co-owner Sandra Armstrong on Aug. 26.<\/p>\n

She told SooToday\u00a0she was \u201cincredibly blindsided and hurt\u201d after being laid off.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a good place to start with, and then she stopped paying us,\u201d\u00a0Lewis said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI kept working there for like six weeks without pay, and then she finally paid us \u2014 and then she did it again.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then, she laid us all off.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"20260616cravingsdinerka03\"
\nCravings Diner co-owner Sandra Armstrong and employee Alexis Lewis pose for a photo during the restaurant’s grand opening in June. Kenneth Armstrong\/SooToday <\/p>\n

Lewis claims\u00a0she has yet to be paid for 96 hours of work and vacation pay, which she says amounts to nearly $1,700 that\u2019s\u00a0owed to her.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was their hardest working employee,\u201d said Lewis. \u201cI did everything for them \u2014 I pulled doubles, even though I shouldn’t.<\/p>\n

Jordan Gauthier was a line cook at Cravings Diner until mid-August, and claims\u00a0he\u2019s been waiting\u00a0about three weeks to receive the $1,800 he\u2019s still owed from work.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"jordangauthier\"
\nJordan Gauthier is a former line cook at Cravings Diner. Photo supplied <\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a little scary at first . . . I thought I was going to end up homeless because I got a really good place where I needed to come up with first and last month’s rent,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd with Sandra not paying us, it kind of screwed a lot of stuff over.\u201d<\/p>\n

When asked about the unpaid wages, Armstrong says\u00a0she\u2019s \u201cjust barely getting by,\u201d and is now in the process of trying to accumulate enough money to \u201cpay everybody fairly at the same time.\u201d<\/p>\n

The co-owner of the restaurant, however, could not\u00a0confirm when the laid-off workers will be paid.<\/p>\n

\u201cTrashing my business and hurting my clientele is going to make me go bankrupt, and they won’t get paid at all,\u201d Armstrong told SooToday.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, I’d appreciate you not writing the story.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both Lewis and Gauthier have since secured new jobs at a mine site north of the Sault.<\/p>\n

\u201cI’m actually kind of glad that she let us go. I wouldn’t have got this opportunity to work for Aramark and actually work two weeks on, two weeks off \u2014 and make a substantial amount of money and be financially OK,\u201d Gauthier said.<\/p>\n

Lewis has since filed a claim with the Ministry of Labour, under the Employment Standards Act, outlining her grievance with her former employer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Financial woes forced a restaurant to lay off the majority of its staff last month The co-owner of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":908236,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[45,49,48,313718],"class_list":["post-908235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-unpaid-wagesmarket-mallemployee-layoffscravings-diner"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/908235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=908235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/908235\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/908236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=908235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=908235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=908235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}