Workers sue Mina Group over pay
Award-winning chef Michael Mina’s acclaimed restaurant group, which last year opened Ayesha Curry’s International Smoke chain, is being sued by current and former employees over various labor violations. The class-action lawsuit alleges that within the last four years, the company did not properly compensate employees for hours worked.
The lawsuit involves an unspecified number of workers.
The workers, who filed the lawsuit against the Mina Group on Thursday in San Francisco Superior Court, claim that since June 13, 2014, management within the Mina Group routinely denied them meal and rest periods, rarely paid employees in a timely manner or provided accurate itemized wage statements, and refused to pay accrued wages to employees who resigned or were terminated. The workers also allege that the Mina Group was aware of its own labor law violations and attempted to conceal documents that showed “the magni-
tude and financial impact of its wrongdoing.”
Scott Cole, an attorney representing the workers, released a statement Friday on behalf of the workers and declined, for now, to comment further.
“The Mina Group is a fine company but, when you break the law, and your workers suffer, you don’t get special treatment,” he said.
Cole’s Oakland law firm specializes in litigation involving overtime pay, meal and rest breaks, minimum-wage and expense-reimbursement violations.
The Mina Group declined to comment on the lawsuit.
According to the filing, the workers are seeking damages in the form of one hour of pay at each worker’s regular rate of pay for each day they were denied a meal period or a rest period, and any economic losses associated with the company’s actions. The overall payment amount was not specified in the filing.
The lawsuit comes after a recent decision by the state’s Division of Labor Standards Enforcement to cite seven Bay Area restaurants for more than $10 million in stolen wages. A focus in the aggressive crackdown was Daly City’s Kome Japanese Seafood Buffet, which according to the state, denied 133 employees $5 million in minimum-wage and overtime pay over several years.
The accusations in the Michael Mina Group lawsuit bear a strong resemblance to claims in an April filing in a lawsuit against San Francisco’s popular Zuni Cafe. The 2017 suit involved eight former bussers and dishwashers who claimed the business failed to provide meal or rest breaks and also withheld vacation pay. The restaurant won a James Beard Award in May for offering the country’s most outstanding restaurant service.
Zuni Cafe owner Gilbert Pilgrim called the allegations “false and inaccurate” and said the cafe, which opened in 1979, “works hard to provide its employees with fair compensation and treatment.”
San Francisco’s Mission Beach Cafe was sued over wage violations in 2017, as was Tacolicious, a Bay Area Mexican food chain that paid roughly $900,000 to settle similar claims from a group of employees.
The Mina Group is a global restaurant operator with more than 30 locations spread across several cities including San Francisco, Las Vegas, Miami and Dubai. The Mina Group’s latest venture, International Smoke, has been very popular. After opening in San Francisco last year, International Smoke now has locations in Houston, Los Angeles, San Diego and Miami.