PER SE STIFFS STAFF
Owes 500G in ‘tips’
One of the world’s priciest restaurants, Per Se, was pocketing tips meant for waiters, the state Attorney General’s Office said Thursday, and now the Columbus Circle eatery must reimburse staff $500,000 to stave off prosecution.
Chef Thomas Keller’s lauded restaurant, where the tasting menu starts at $310 per person, ignored a new state law requiring restaurants to use clear language in billing customers, a twoyear investigation by Attorney General Schneiderman found.
For nearly two years starting in January 2011, Per Se tacked an extra 20 percent onto banquet customer bills, making it sound like a mandatory gratuity.
“A service charge of twenty percent (20%) will be added to all food and beverage charges incurred by the Client,” the private dining agreements read.
But wait staff never saw a cent of it, officials said.
Instead, Per Se used the cash to pay operational expenses, such as rent, maintenance and wages, said settlement papers Schneiderman released Thursday.
“The fees were not distributed as gratuities to em ployees working private dining events,” they said.
Per Se should have called the extra charge an “administrative fee” or “operational charge,” which it did on its own in September 2012, the papers said.
Banquet wait staff make $16.60 to $28 an hour, the papers say. But now, within the month, Per Se must create of list of current and former wait staff and send them compensation checks.
“Today’s agreement ensures that workers at Per Se will not continue to be cheated out of their hardearned tips — tips that customers intended for them,” Schneiderman said. “And it reaffirms the right of satisfied restaurantgoers not to be misled about whether a ‘service charge’ is actually paid to workers as a tip.”
Per Se called it an “unintentional oversight,” saying that it had not been aware of the new law.
“This matter relates to the words that Per Se used to describe its private dining operational charge during a 21month period three years ago . . . Per Se revised this language on its own, well before it ever heard from the AG’s office, and has been in compliance for nearly three years,” it said in a statement.