Naples restaurant servers stage walkout over pay changes

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Restaurant servers in Naples staged a walkout to protest changes to their pay structure. The heart of the issue is tips.

Hampton Social in Naples is moving from a traditional gratuity to a service charge model.

They are upset because they went from a gratuity-based tipping system to a service charge system.

The restaurant is cutting that back to $2 an hour and requiring an auto-gratuity of 20% on all receipts. However, the company keeps 2%, and the 18% pot is split between all staff. 

With gratuity, the employees used to get the full tip given to them.

The service charge is divided between all the employees and the corporation, which employees are not happy about.

More than a dozen employees called out of work Thursday to protest this change.

They stood in front of the restaurant with signs that said “anchored in greed” along with “know where your tip goes into: this corporation’s pockets.”

We asked how this change would affect them, and most of them said it would affect their lives.

Many of these employees have been here since the restaurant opened and say this change is bad for everyone.

Two other locations in the state joined in on this protest, one in Delray and the other in Orlando.

The Naples restaurant is closed on Thursday. The same is true for Orlando, but Delray is taking walk-ins.

We spoke to an attorney about the change.

“You can’t fight a losing battle. There are rules in the state of Florida for workers and minimum wages, and there are separate rules for servers and people who work on tips,” said Scot Goldberg, attorney.

An employee shared a message with us from CEO Brad Parker: “The reality is that we are not making a profit in the locations in question, which puts us in a position where we must decide between closing stores or adapting our business model.”

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