{"id":478271,"date":"2026-10-27T15:54:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-27T15:54:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/478271\/"},"modified":"2026-10-27T15:54:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-27T15:54:09","slug":"houston-restaurant-at-center-of-explosive-wage-theft-lawsuit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/478271\/","title":{"rendered":"Houston restaurant at center of explosive wage theft lawsuit"},"content":{"rendered":"

A bartender at a popular Houston restaurant has filed a lawsuit alleging its owners have engaged in wage theft<\/a>. Michael Baron is accusing Relish’s<\/a> Town & Country location of misappropriating tip money and distributing it to staff who don’t get tip credit.<\/p>\n

Baron’s complaint was filed Friday in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, the Houston Chronicle first reported<\/a>. According to that complaint, Baron has been a bartender at the Relish at 12850 Memorial Dr. since November 2024. Specifically, the lawsuit is filed against the restaurant’s parent companies and its owners. The defendants are:<\/p>\n

Under federal law, an employer can pay a tipped worker less than the minimum wage ($7.25 in Texas) and count their tips toward the difference. If the employer takes the tip credit, any required tip pool can only be distributed to staff who typically get tips, like waiters and bartenders. Managers and supervisors can’t touch it, but they can get tips from customers who give it to them directly for any services they personally provide.<\/p>\n

According to the lawsuit, Baron said he was paid $6 an hour plus $1.25-per-hour tip credit, and servers were paid the standard $2.13 an hour with a larger tip credit. He said Relish pooled those tips and handed them out based on hours and a “points” system.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Defendants, not the workers, collect the pooled tips, assign each worker’s point value, and pay each worker’s share through payroll as ‘Tips Owed’ and ‘Gratuity Owed.’ Defendants’ Handbook states that tardiness and ‘other performance criteria’ may affect a worker’s points in the pool,” the lawsuit read.<\/p>\n

According to the lawsuit, Baron alleged that Relish paid managerial staff money from that tip pool. Mercedes Perez, a maitre d’, purported in the lawsuit that co-owner Dustin Teague expanded her role on Jan. 26, 2026. Perez’s responsibilities included supervising front-of-house staff, handling schedules, and other duties.<\/p>\n

In the lawsuit, Perez said she received more than $21,000 in pooled tips over an unspecified period of time. The lawsuit also alleged that the restaurant’s lead manager may have also received money from that pool. In September, following what Perez alleged was a “wage dispute,” Relish changed Perez’s role so that she would no longer have the authority to write employees up.\u00a0<\/p>\n

According to the lawsuit, the restaurant first explained the tip credit to tipped employees in a written notice. Baron alleged that’s when he noticed he was paid differently compared to the rest of the staff: $6 and $1.25 tip credit versus $2.13 and the larger tip credit. Baron then filed his lawsuit.<\/p>\n

Baron is seeking relief from all parties involved, including Relish letting tipped employees know the lawsuit has been filed, damages in the amount of the money that is equal to the tip credit that was purportedly taken by the restaurant, all unpaid minimum wage amounts, other damages and attorney fees and costs.<\/p>\n

Relish did not respond to Chron’s request for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A bartender at a popular Houston restaurant has filed a lawsuit alleging its owners have engaged in wage…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":478272,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[1703,1704,56,58,57],"class_list":["post-478271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-chronfood","tag-chronstaff","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=478271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478271\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/478272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=478271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=478271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=478271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}