Wichita-area restaurants ordered to pay nearly $1 million in back wages to employees

A group of Wichita-area restaurants will be ordered to pay nearly a million dollars in back wages to workers after being accused of violating tipping rules and denying minimum or overtime wages for several years.

A federal jury in Kansas awarded $957,324 in back wages to 168 workers of Los Cocos Mexican Restaurant , at their three locations in Wichita, Derby and Andover, according to a news release from the U.S. Department of Labor.

A lawsuit filed in January 2022 accused the three joint owners of the restaurants of violating federal laws of using tips earned by servers to pay hosts and bussers and denying other workers overtime pay. Department of Labor investigators say the violations spanned from May 2017 to December 2022.

The nearly million-dollar figure is split into $567,291 in minimum wages for loss of tip credit, $276,115 in overtime pay for “back of house” employees such as cooks, $88,590 in withheld tips and $25,328 for other minimum wage violations, the release said.

“A jury of their peers found the owners of these three Los Cocos restaurants willfully took wages from servers to pay co-workers who bussed tables and greeted diners and did not pay workers overtime or paid some less than the required minimum wage for their hard work,” Regional Solicitor Christine Heri in Chicago said.

“The Department of Labor will take all necessary actions to ensure workers receive their rightfully earned wages and will present evidence and request the court order the employers to pay employees an amount equal to their back wages in liquidated damages,” Heri added.

Not the first time Los Cocos has been investigated

Now, a judge is expected to issue a payment order for the restaurant to pay the wages and settle the lawsuit.

“The department continues to seek recovery of an equal amount in liquidated damages for the affected workers. Once recovered, the department will disburse funds to the workers,” the release said.

This is not the first time the restaurant has been investigated or fined. The Department of Labor found Los Cocos violating the Fair Labor Standards Act in 2009.

In November 2023, the court ordered the restaurant’s owners to pay $16,734 back in overtime wages to 43 servers. Those wages remain unpaid, bringing the total restitution owed to employees to $974,057, officials say.

In 2023, the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division recovered more than $274 million in back wages for nearly 163,000 food service industry workers across the U.S.