As a restaurant owner, you know that you need to follow specific guidelines for both the security of your restaurant and the fair compensation of your employees.
Violations in the restaurant industry, depending on the situation, can be expensive and even dangerous. To make sure you’re compliant in all areas, we’ve gathered a list of a few things you’ll want to be aware of while running your restaurant.
OSHA
OSHA stands for Occupational Safety and Health Administration, an agency administered by the U.S. Labor Department that protects employees from getting injured or ill at work. OSHA has guidelines that need to be met when it comes to the restaurant industry, such as requiring a certain number of fire extinguishers available or setting worker age limits. In addition, it is common to have rules on how clean the restaurant floor must be during operating hours and the signs that must be visible in public restrooms, such as “employees must wash their hands before returning to work.”
Health Codes
Beside remaining compliant with OSHA, restaurant owners need to be aware of the food service codes and regulations mandated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) (FDA). It is the duty of the FDA to ensure that restaurants prepare and handle food safely. It may be worthwhile to have them take a course on healthy practices to ensure that your workers treat food properly. This course may be mandated by your state rules, but if not, you should consider having employees to make sure your customers stay safe.
Hours and Wage Law
The restaurant industry is unique in the way that employees are paid. When a restaurant hires tipped people, they usually receive a lower hourly wage and have the ability to get the tips they receive to make up salaries. The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) is responsible for legislation on tipped employees to ensure they earn the compensation they ought to receive. Sometimes employers don’t handle tips properly, and that can lead to problems like paying back missed wages, and in serious and extreme cases, employee lawsuits are initiated.
It is important to be aware of minimum wage laws for restaurant owners who have not tipped workers. Minimum wage rates vary by state, so you’re going to want to check in with your state’s rules to see what your workers can pay for. It is also worth noting that minimum wage rates will differ from local, state, and federal. If any of your staff is covered by all three rates, you will have to pay them more if they were not.
Payroll Tax Laws for Restaurants
Due to the nature of the employees hired payroll in the restaurant industry can become slightly more complicated. The key thing you need to be mindful of with restaurant payrolls is accurately paying to your tiped workers. Tipped employees have special tax responsibilities that allow supervisors to comply with and oversee them. Such regulations can become even more complicated if tips are exchanged among team members through a tip pool. You will benefit from the FICA Tip Tax Credit if you obey the tip reporting codes properly. To qualify, managers must complete IRS Form 8846 to receive credit and IRS Form 8027 to disclose tips if more than 10 tipped employees are employed by the restaurant.
You may be looking for some extra help around running a restaurant, managing employees, and calculating the payroll. Choosing payroll company for restaurant payroll assistance can leave you with more time to focus on your business, rather than dealing with complicated payroll and tax laws.
You will have access to: Minimum Wage Updates by choosing Nuage Digital to assist with your restaurant payroll: We will alert you when employee wages and/or tips do not meet minimum wage requirements.
FICA Tip Credit Report: This report will calculate and track how much of the annual business tax you are entitled to claim.
Tip Sign-Off Report: This report provides written proof of collected and reported feedback from staff, and lets you remain as a business owner in compliance.
You will also have access to:
Our customer service team
Flexible payroll options
Our taxes paid and filed guarantee
For more information on how Nuage Digital can help with the payroll needs of your restaurant, Contact our experts today.
