Big tip causes unexpected trouble for restaurant server

Ryan Brandt stood next to one of the more than 30 diners she’d just waited on as the man made an announcement.

“We are tipping,” Grant Wise hollered so the entire party could hear,“a total of $4,400.”

Cheers erupted from the table. Brandt, 35, buried her face in her hands and sobbed as Wise put his hands on her shoulders.

“It was a beautiful moment and one I’ll never forget,”wise wrote in an online post.

The money was to be split among Brandt and the other servers who waited on Wise’s party. But the tip for the Dec. 2 dinner has devolved into a nightmare for Brandt and a public relations firestorm for Oven & Tap, the Bentonville, Arkansas, restaurant where she worked for 3½ years. Twelve days later, Brandt is no longer an employee there.

After getting the tip, Brandt said her manager told her that she and the other servers who worked the party couldn’t keep all of it. Instead, they would have to split it among the bartenders, cooks and food runners, something that had never happened before, Brandt said.

Still, Brandt turned over the tip, Horton said. Then she reached out to Wise to thank him for his generosity while explaining she hadn’t gotten to keep the full tip.

On Dec. 7, the owners told Brandt they were firing her because she’d told Wise how his party’s tip was being distributed, Horton said.

After Brandt was let go, Wise started a Gofundme campaign to raise money for Brandt.

As the campaign was raising money, Brandt got good news, Wise said: She’d gotten a job as a server at another restaurant.