Restaurant owners failed to pay their chefs overtime

The U.S. Department of Labor has recovered $101,694 in back wages and damages from the owners of a Honolulu restaurant who illegally failed to pay overtime wages to 10 chefs, many of whom worked as many as 20 hours of overtime a week.

The department’s Wage and Hour Division found Keiji Fukuda and Yuki Naka — owners of Imanas Tei restaurant — in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act by denying their salaried chefs overtime pay for hours over 40 in a workweek. The owners had inaccurately characterized the chefs’ primary work as management rather than as meal preparers.

In addition, Fukuda and Naka committed federal record-keeping violations by failing to keep records of all hours worked, including overtime hours.

“Overtime earned must be overtime paid,” Wage and Hour Division District Director Terrence Trotter in Honolulu said in a news release. “Paying salaries to frontline kitchen staff does not allow an employer like Imanas Tei to evade its obligation to pay workers all of their legally earned wages.”

In addition to recovering back wages and damages, the division assessed $4,488 in civil penalties for the willful nature of the violations, Trotter said.

In fiscal year 2022 the Wage and Hour Division recovered more than $27.1 million for more than 22,000 workers in the food service industry. In 2022 the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported near-record numbers of job openings and workers in the accommodations and food services industry quitting their jobs.

The Wage and Hour Division also protects workers against retaliation, harassment, intimidation and adverse actions against employees who assert their worker rights. Learn more about the division, how to file an online complaint and find a search tool to use if you think you may be owed back wages collected by the agency. Workers and employers with questions can contact the division’s toll-free helpline at 866-4US-WAGE (487-9243).