Waitress Fired For Receiving $2K Tip Gets The Last Laugh

In the majority of U.S. states, there is an inherent uncertainty to working serving tables in restaurants. Many establishments pay less than minimum wage to waiters and waitresses — because, legally, they can — and these servers make up the rest of their salary in tips. This is why they’re always so eager to please: they live on their tips.

In 2014 Saru Jayaraman, of Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, told British newspaper The Guardian, “When you live off of tips, your rent and your bills don’t go up and down, but your income does. It varies day to day, week to week, month to month, year to year.” She added, “In fact, you are interviewing for your job every time a new customer sits down.”

There’s a gender imbalance at play here, too. Jayaraman revealed, “Actually 70 percent of tipped workers are women.” She added, “They use food stamps at double the rate of the rest of the U.S. workforce, which means that the women who put food on our tables in America cannot afford to actually eat themselves.” 

All of this — admittedly depressing — background is about putting you in the shoes of service industry staff. They’re in a world that encourages them to deliver above and beyond in order to simply earn a minimum wage. But how betrayed would you feel if you did that, received a substantial tip, and then had it taken away from you? That wouldn’t be fair, right?

When Ryan Brandt began a shift on December 2, 2021, at the Oven & Tap restaurant in Bentonville, Arkansas, it was a night like any other. She had worked there for three-and-a-half years, earning a livelihood and starting to pay off her student loans. Brandt had always done her best to give great service — and this hadn’t gone unnoticed.

On that particular evening, the restaurant was serving a large party — all real-estate movers and shakers from across the U.S. The dinner was all part of a conference thrown by Witly, a marketing consultancy firm that works with real estate agents. Oven & Tap was high on the list of Witly president Grant Wise’s most-liked eateries — and Brandt was his favorite server.

Wise called the restaurant ahead of time and specifically asked that Brandt was assigned to their table. He had a plan in mind, and didn’t want anything to ruin it, so he also inquired about the restaurant’s tipping policy. Satisfied with its answer, he and his colleagues ate and drank and had a whale of a time at what he described as their “$100 Dinner Club.”

After dinner, Wise stood at the head of the table and beckoned Brandt to take a spot beside him. Then, while a colleague filmed them, he revealed his plan by saying, “Everybody at this table has contributed $100 for you and for the other waitress. So, we are tipping a total of $4,400 for you to split with the other girl who took care of us.” 

At this point, the entire party burst into applause, and it all became too much for Brandt. As the realization of what Wise was doing for her set in, she began crying. Wise later told local news station KNWA, “It was an incredible thing to be able to do, and to see the server’s reaction and to know what that meant for her and the impact it’s had on her life already.”

The whole experience had turned into an emotional rollercoaster for Brandt. She told KFSM News, “I was definitely, like, just in shock and overwhelmed with joy and gratitude in that moment as soon as I realized what he was saying.” But that joy would be short-lived, as Brandt would soon have the rug pulled out from under her.

When Brandt told her manager about Wise and his party’s incredible generosity, she was informed she couldn’t keep the $2,200 tip for herself. She told KNWA, “I was to give my cash over to my shift manager to be taken, and then I was going to be taking home 20 percent.” This seemed fishy, though: as Brandt insisted in an interview with KFSM News, “We don’t tip-share in any way.”

In this case, Brandt’s boss told her the money would be shared equally between all the serving staff, bartenders, and chefs. She was adamant this had never been the restaurant’s policy before, though. Her lawyer Bill Horton later claimed that standard practice had always been that a sum equivalent to 7 percent of each server’s sales was reallocated to the chefs and bartenders, while servers kept all of their own personal tips.

When the confused and disillusioned Brandt told Wise that her bosses weren’t allowing her to keep the tip, he sprang into action. He approached the manager and said his party only wanted Brandt and the other server to have the tip, so he wanted their $4,400 back. He then went outside with Brandt and gave her the $2,200 directly.

End of story, right? Wrong. Only five days after Wise’s act of generosity, Brandt was fired by Oven & Tap. Horton would later tell newspaper The Washington Post that she had learned her dismissal was because she told Wise how his tip would be split among the staff. This would be disputed — sort of — by the restaurant’s owners Luke Wetzel and Mollie Mullis, though.

In a statement, the owners said Brandt “was not let go because she chose to keep the tip money. The other two servers who received generous tips that evening remain members of our team.” They also said, “We commend the organization that dined with us and generously gave to our staff. They have an absolute right to tip whoever they want, and we honored that request.”

Wetzel and Mullis did admit some fault, but not when it came to dismissing Brandt. They believed the situation “could have been handled differently by reminding our team how we would be splitting any tips prior to the event. However, our policy has always been to participate in a tip pool/share with the staff.” A representative of the restaurant even boasted about its generosity to CBS News.

The representative’s statement revealed, “Because we feel the entire staff worked so hard that night to serve a large party of 32 people, we distributed approximately $7,000 in additional compensation to the rest of the team from that evening’s shift to ensure they know their hard work is appreciated as well.” As admirable as that was, though, Brandt was still out of a job. What was she to do?

Well, when Wise found out that Brandt had been fired, he was shocked. He immediately took to social media, writing on Instagram, “I’m so saddened to hear that the girl we tipped the other night at our $100 Dinner Club has been fired from her job. I don’t fully understand why this would happen to what seems like such a sweet and kind-hearted woman.”

Wise continued, “Nonetheless, I’m committed to showing her that there are great people in the world that will do good when they can!” What exactly did he mean by that? Well, Wise took it upon himself to set up a GoFundMe page for Brandt, to tide her over until she was able to find another job. After only a few days, it had raised a staggering $8,700.

On the GoFundMe page, Wise went into further detail about why he had set it up. He wrote, “I do not personally know Ryan outside of her waiting on us in past Oven & Tap dinner outings. I do not know what type of employee she was outside of what I personally experienced and what we’ve read from other people commenting that were her regulars.”

Wise continued, “My only goal is to help her get through this experience with the least amount of stress and anxiety possible and on to whatever her next opportunity may be.” He added, “My intention is not to cause any harm to what was one of my favorite places in Northwest Arkansas but simply to help Ryan get back on her feet.” A commendable message, certainly.

Once again, though, Brandt’s happiness didn’t last long. On December 10, she received a strongly worded cease-and-desist letter from Oven & Tap, which alleged she had dragged its reputation through the mud. The letter, written by lawyer Steve Brooks, even claimed the story going so far and wide could hurt the restaurant’s operation on a permanent basis.

In the letter, Brooks claimed the restaurant had seen “an outpouring of negative reviews” online, including many one-star ratings from people who had never even set foot in the establishment. He believed Oven & Tap had been branded “as a restaurant that treats its employees poorly.” All in all, the whole situation had turned very ugly.

To the restaurant’s dismay, the bad feeling from the public didn’t just stop at bad reviews — it was all over social media. Twitter users reacted with posts such as, “Oven & Tap, you did your former waitress Ryan Brandt dirty” and, “Sounds to me like the Oven & Tap is a place to avoid in Arkansas.” In truth, this was far from the worst of it.

One infuriated user wrote, “Unless Oven & Tap in Bentonville, Arkansas, rehires Ryan Brandt, do not give [it] your business. At the very least, the manager needs to be fired for doing this.” Another directly criticized the owners, writing, “Unbelievable. Feel bad for the servers… Luke Wetzel and Mollie Mullis should be ashamed of themselves.”

In a vitriolic takedown, another user stated, “Oven and Tap, your decision to fire Ryan Brandt will be the end of your business. I hope you never get another customer. You ruined what could have been great publicity for your establishment. I’m in marketing and can’t believe how idiotic you are.”

There were some dissenting opinions, though. For example, one Twitter user — who presumably worked in the industry — pushed back with, “Servers don’t do 100 percent of the work. They don’t prep, cook food, wash dishes, so splitting tips is industry standard. So, for Ryan Brandt to keep the tip to herself is selfish.”

As the debate raged online, a silver lining revealed itself for Brandt. By the time she received the cease-and-desist letter, she had already secured her immediate future. On December 9, Wise posted an update to the GoFundMe page that read, “I am very happy to share that Ryan has been offered a new job with another local restaurant and she was able to start her first shift last night.”

Interestingly, throughout the entire incident, Oven & Tap refused to publicly confirm precisely why it had fired Brandt — it simply reiterated that it wasn’t because she had kept her tip. In a statement to The Independent, the owners said, “Oven & Tap doesn’t deliver terminations lightly. Because we value our employees and highly respect their privacy, we never discuss personnel issues.”

The statement continued, “Our policy has always been to participate in a tip pool/share with the staff. Tip-sharing is a common restaurant industry practice that we follow to ensure all of our team members are adequately compensated for their hard work.” Still, this didn’t entirely tally with what Oven & Tap had told The Washington Post.

Indeed, the spokesman who’d previously spoken to The Washington Post had stated that tips paid for by credit card were split among the staff, but cash was another matter. That person had claimed servers kept all cash tips for themselves — contradicting the owners’ other statements. But then the waters were further muddied when they claimed “large” tips were dealt with on an individual basis, with no explanation on what any such threshold amount might be. 

If anything, the entire incident simply threw the spotlight on everything that’s wrong with tipping culture. Corey Mintz, writer of The Next Supper: The End of Restaurants as We Knew Them, and What Comes After, argued just that in his NBC News column. He felt the viral nature of the story actually obscured the uncomfortable truth at the heart of it. 

Mintz wrote, “So, we’ve got an easy-to-hate villainous restaurant manager, a victim the audience can identify with… and a whole squadron of heroes.” He continued, “But this fairytale, including the heart-warming finale in which the gallant diners started a crowdfunding page for the now out-of-work server, omits or ignores the true awfulness of what happened.” The true problem, to Mintz, is the sub-minimum wage waiting staff are paid.

In Arkansas, tipped workers are paid a minimum wage of $2.63 — much, much lower than the standard $11 for non-tipped workers. If a waiter or waitress in a restaurant doesn’t make enough tips to push them up to the minimum wage, the employer is supposed to pay it. But this is not always enforced, and in any case the arrangement inflicts an additional cost and moral burden on an eatery’s customers.

It’s become a given that customers pay at least a 20 percent tip on their meals, and this is what helps ensure their servers make minimum wage. In fact, this practice was even made a law in 1938, with a further tip credit amendment in 1996. It effectively requires customers to tip whether service is good or bad, which is strange and hard to enforce in and of itself, but it also creates another problem.

According to Mintz, society’s idea that tipping is a “reward or punishment for servers makes it a power trip for many diners.” He wasn’t impressed by Wise filming the event and posting it to social media with a background score “that sounds like it comes from a music library marked ‘inspiring sunsets.’” Whether you believe Wise was truly being selfless or not, Mintz certainly raised some interesting points.

Regardless of where you stand on the issue of tipping, though, it is nice to know that Brandt landed on her feet thanks to Wise. In fact, on December 14, 2021, he posted a heartwarming update on the GoFundMe page. It indicated that he and his favorite waitress would be seeing more of each other in the near future. 

Wise explained, “After discussing it with Ryan directly, she and I both agreed that we could continue to raise more funds and ‘pay it forward’ to the next group of restaurant staff who would get the tip.” What exactly did this entail? Well, he revealed, “In January, we are going to host another $100 Dinner Club and I have invited Ryan to be our ‘Guest of Honor!’” 

“Any dollar amount raised over the $8,732 that has already been raised and is being paid out to Ryan will be given directly to the staff of the restaurant we decide to eat at,” continued Wise. “We will be working to ensure through this that all staff in the restaurant are tipped, so everyone feels blessed by our dinner.” Cue staff in every Arkansas restaurant crossing their fingers!