About TapHouse Kitchen - Phoenix
"We at Taphouse Kitchen care deeply about our customers and employees, especially during these unpredictable times, and would like to respond to the recent report by Channel 3 News that aired on May 14th. Like many in the industry, we've taken some time to review best steps forward and are doing everything we can for our employees, by both paying them well and by keeping our doors open to ensure that they have jobs. And, during our takeout-only service and our recent limited capacity dine-in service, it was decided that tips collected during dine-in and takeout service, only for the next four weeks, would be distributed evenly amongst all tipped employees, that is, all tips would be shared or "pooled." This direction was based on the thought that this was the fairest way to distribute tips to all tipped employees -- from the person taking the order to the person packaging the food to the one person delivering the food to the customer. We are doing so directly through employee paychecks. We averaged employee historical tips, and added it directly to their paychecks. To be clear, tipped employees are receiving paychecks that include tips equal to what they were receiving pre-pandemic regardless of the dramatic downturn in business. It was never our intention to "keep" tips; they were merely paid another way. Staff was informed that this temporary change in policy would only be for the next 4 weeks. At no time has any of the collected tips gone to ownership or management."