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Fayetteville (KNWA/KFTA) –On Friday, Ryan Brandt was one of two servers at Oven and Tap in Bentonville who helped a party of more than forty people.
When it was time to pay the bill, each person gave a $100 tip, giving the two waitresses a total of $4,400.
“It was an amazing thing to do, and it was great to see her reaction, what it meant to her, and how it has already changed her life,” says Grant Wise.
Witly is a real estate company owned by Wise. He says he called the restaurant ahead of time and asked about tipping so that everything would go smoothly.
Bentonville Restaurant Week is underway.
But he says that things didn’t go the way he had planned.
“I was told to give my cash to my shift manager and that I would get 20% of it back,” says Brandt.
Brandt says the restaurant asked her to give the tip to her co-workers. In the three and a half years she has worked at Oven and Tap, she says something has never happened.
Wise says that he didn’t mean to share tips with people who didn’t serve his party. He asked the restaurant to take back the tip and gave Brandt the cash outside.
Brandt says that after that, she was fired and couldn’t pay her bills.
“It was terrible.” I borrowed a lot of money for school. Most of them were turned off because of the pandemic, but they will be turned back on in January, which is a harsh reality, says Brandt.
Brandt says the restaurant told her she was fired because she broke the rules by telling Wise about how the tips could be shared.
Restaurants open on Christmas Day:
KNWA asked Oven and Tap if they thought that was true. They didn’t want to talk to us, but they did send KNWA a statement.
“After eating, this big group of guests asked that their tips go to two specific servers. We did everything they asked. “We don’t talk about the details of firing an employee out of respect for our highly valued team members.”
Mollie Mullis and Luke Wetzel, the owners of Oven & Tap, sent an email to KNWA on December 10, saying:
“We applaud the group that ate with us and gave money to our staff. They have the right to give tips to anyone they want, and we did what they asked.
When Oven & Tap fire someone, they don’t take it lightly. We care about our employees and take their privacy very seriously, so we never talk about employee issues. The server who was fired a few days after we ate with her did not lose her job because she kept the tip money. The other two servers who worked that night and got big tips from the Witly group, including one who also got $2,200, are still on our team.
Oven & Tap has always worked hard to make sure that all of our employees get paid fairly and well. We know and regret that a recent event in our restaurant could have been handled differently if we had reminded our staff ahead of time how we would be splitting any tips. However, our policy has always been to share tips with the staff. Tip sharing is a common practice in the restaurant business, and we do it to make sure that everyone gets paid enough for their hard work.
Wise has now started a campaign to raise money online to help Brandt.
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