What is the Tip Credit? Your Guide to Restaurant Employee Minimum Wage

Tipping is as American as apple pie — so much so that it has become heavily regulated.

Here’s one tipping regulation that most restaurant owners can cheer for: the tip credit. Find out about the federal laws that allow employers to subsidize labor costs through tipped earnings. (Obligatory disclaimer: this is not intended to be legal or financial advice — always consult with your legal counsel or tax professional if you have questions!)

What is the tip credit?

There’s a federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, but many restaurants only pay their servers $2.13. How?

Since servers and bartenders earn the majority of their living from tips, the U.S. Department of Labor created the “tip credit,” which allows employers to count tipped earnings toward their minimum wage requirements.

Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), the federal minimum wage is set at $7.25 per hour, but employers can take a credit of up to $5.12 per hour. (Importantly, this number varies by state — more on that later).

If you take the tip credit, you’ll ensure that servers earn at least $7.25 an hour in wages and tips (hopefully much more!), and take the tip credit when it’s time to run payroll.

“Taking” the tip credit: Is it fair to employees?

As most restaurant pros know all too well, this industry is known for its tight margins. That’s why a tip-friendly culture can be beneficial to both hospitality employers and employees. Tipping frequently enables hardworking, well-deserving employees to earn far more than minimum wage requirements — and far more than what revenue constraints allow operators to pay their people. (In fact, many full-service restaurant servers earn $20 or more per hour.)

In states where the tip credit is allowed, and in restaurants where tipping volumes are sufficient, the tip credit allows restaurant owners to reduce some of their labor costs, while ensuring their staff still make at least a living wage.

Which states allow you to take the tip credit?

Based on your location, taking the tip credit may not be an option for you. Make sure you know the legality in your state and how it will affect your recruiting efforts.

States that allow the tip credit

If you live in any of the following states, you’re in luck! As of publication, these are the states that allow some form of the tip credit.

Alabama
Arizona
Arkansas
Colorado
Connecticut
Delaware
District of Columbia
Florida
Georgia
Hawaii
Idaho
Illinois
Indiana
Iowa
Kansas
Kentucky
Louisiana
Maine
Maryland
Massachusetts
Michigan
Mississippi
Missouri
Nebraska
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New Mexico
New York
North Carolina
North Dakota
Ohio
Oklahoma
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
South Carolina
South Dakota
Tennessee
Texas
Utah
Vermont
Virginia
West Virginia
Wisconsin
Wyoming

While all of these states allow a tip credit, check your state laws to see how much you can take per hour. In states with higher minimum wage requirements, you may see higher tip credit amounts — and other states that lower the maximum tip credit amount.

States that ban the tip credit

At the time of publication, these states do not allow employers to take the tip credit for their FOH staff, meaning all employees must be paid at least the state minimum wage.

Alaska
California
Minnesota
Montana
Nevada
Oregan
Washington

Which employees does the tip credit apply to?

Big picture: In states where you can take the tip credit, it applies only to tipped employees. That means your untipped employees — i.e., your back-of-house staff — are not eligible for a tip credit.

But of course, we’re talking about the law here, so exceptions and caveats abound! Even if it’s allowed in your state, there are still some boxes you have to check before taking the tip credit on all of your tipped employees.

To determine which employees qualify for the tip credit, here are a few questions you need to ask.

Is the tip credit allowed in my state? Again, a handful of states do not allow employers to take the federal tip credit, period.
How much do my employees earn in tips? You can only take the tip credit for tipped employees who regularly earn at least $30 a month in tips.
How much time are my tipped employees spending on non-tip-producing duties?

This one is a little tricky. Basically, the tip credit can only be applied to the hours your tipped employees spend doing work that produces tips OR that directly supports tip-producing work, a.k.a. side work. (Per the DOL, supporting tasks include “dining room prep work, such as refilling salt and pepper shakers and ketchup bottles, rolling silverware, folding napkins, and setting tables”).

However: Employers lose the tip credit for the time their tipped employees spend doing side work if that side work exceeds 20% of their workweek. (This is known as the 80/20 rule.)

Additionally, employers lose the tip credit for the time their employees spend doing side work if they’re doing side work for more than 30 consecutive minutes. In other words, even if an employee spends less than 20% of their total workweek doing side work, the tip credit doesn’t apply to any periods of time where the employee spent 30 consecutive minutes or more on side work.

Suffice it to say, this can get really complicated, really fast. Understanding the rules themselves is only half the battle; being able to track and apply them can be a challenge, too.

If you’re confused (or even if you think you’ve got it down pat) — it’s a good idea to consult with legal counsel to ensure you’re operating above board.

Can I take the tip credit if I implement a tip pool?

Tip pooling, like the tip credit, is pretty heavily regulated at both the federal and state levels. And just like taking the tip credit, it can be easy to be unintentionally out of compliance when it comes to tip pooling.

So what happens if you run a tip pool and you want to take the tip credit (or vice versa)?

There are two key things to note.

Implementing a tip pool doesn’t preclude you from taking the tip credit.
However, if you want to take the tip credit, your tip pool cannot include back-of-house (i.e. non-tipped) employees.

In other words: if you’re taking the tip credit, only tipped employees can participate in tip pooing or tip sharing. If BOH employees get tipped out — which is legal in many places — then you can’t take the tip credit for any of your employees, including your FOH folks.

Do I have to notify my employees about the tip credit?

You are required to give your employees notice at the time they’re hired that you’re taking the tip credit.

What is the FICA tip credit?

This is another huge opportunity for employers to increase profit margins without cutting costs on food or labor. Typically, employers are required to pay a share of their employees’ Social Security and Medicare taxes (also known as FICA) based on their income. The program was designed to incentivize employers to better monitor staff tip reporting.

Since many servers and bartenders increase their wages to well over minimum wage in tips, the FICA tip credit allows restaurant owners to decrease their tax liability. Rather than determining their FICA tax liability by total income (including tips), this tax credit allows employers to only pay FICA taxes on employee earnings that are above minimum wage.

Simplify tipping for your team

If you have tipped employees, you have to deal with a lot of cash. It’s taking up managers’ time and creating a reporting nightmare. Move into the future with Kickfin — the easiest way to pay out tips. Kickfin’s capabilities digitize tip payouts, simplify tip pool calculations, and makes reporting a breeze.

Learn more about Kickfin today.

People live paycheck-to-paycheck

Not just some people are living paycheck to paycheck. Most people are.

That’s right: around 64% of U.S. consumers are just getting by. Even more shocking, 51% of consumers who earn over six figures are still living paycheck to paycheck, despite their higher tax bracket.

It’s a major reason why employees need access to their earnings sooner rather than later. The pressure of watching your bank account slowly drain in the two weeks between payday is putting a lot of pressure on people, leading to a much greater demand for instant payments than ever before.

Instant payouts are now table stakes

A PYMNTS study found that people of all ages prefer to be paid out immediately, as well as some other interesting statistics:

When given the choice, 68% of respondents said they would opt for an instant pay out
40% of gig workers surveyed were willing to pay a fee for an instant disbursement
81% of respondents were willing to switch jobs to an employer that offers instant access to earned wages and tips

It’s safe to say instant payouts are becoming the expectation for today’s modern workforce. But not all instant payouts are created equal.

Consumers are much more likely to engage with an instant payout system if they aren’t required to share their bank account and routing numbers and can access funds with just their debit card credentials. Why? It’s faster, more convenient, and feels more secure.

Instant payouts and tip management: a perfect use case.

Instant payout innovation has come at the perfect time for the restaurant industry, which is struggling more than ever with the hassles and cost of cash.

If you’re in the restaurant biz, then you know: Most consumers pay with credit cards these days, not cash. That means there’s rarely enough cash on hand to pay out tips at the end of a shift. But employees still want and need instant access to their tip earnings.

Enter: instant payouts. Offering employees the option to receive their tip earnings directly to their bank of choice, the second their shift ends, can go a long way in improving employee satisfaction and ensuring their financial security.

But instant payouts are more than a work perk for employees. The operational benefits for employers range from reduced administrative burden and significant time savings to stronger compliance and streamlined reporting.

Modernizing your tip management strategy: 5 best practices

There are three key components to your tip management strategy:

Tip pool policy: How are you divvying up tips among your staff?
The payout method: How are you distributing those payments?
The systems and tech: What are you using to facilitate those payments?

Under the current circumstances, restaurant operators are under immense pressure to bring their tip management into the future.

5 best practices for tip management

Based on our experience working with restaurant operators across the country, we’ve found that these five practices are the perfect recipe for building a successful tip management system.

Determine the right model and method for your restaurant, based on your location and tech stack
Get a written tip policy (and get it legally approved)
Solicit employee feedback in a structured way
Leverage technology for efficiency, accuracy, and compliance
Don’t over-complicate (but do over-communicate!)

Tip management solution must-haves

When seeking a new tip management solution, make sure you carefully vet each system to see if it really meets your needs, or if it’ll be just as frustrating as cash. Here are a few suggestions for what should be on your checklist:

Instant payouts
Direct to bank of choice
Availability of employee funds
Payroll option
Integrations
Simple implementation + onboarding process
Around-the-clock customer service

Big emphasis on strong customer support teams. Restaurants and bars don’t have “typical” business hours, so neither should your tech support.

Bar Louie automates payouts with Kickfin

In a recent case study, we took a deep dive into our partnership with Bar Louie, a chain with over 60 locations that took advantage of our new integration with Toast. They made the switch from cash payouts to Kickfin’s instant, direct-to-bank payouts and haven’t looked back.

Two-minute tip-outs

Before Kickfin, managers spent an average of 45 minutes per shift working through Bar Louie’s complex tip out policy and counting cash. The tip pooling rules were important to them — it’s what makes the entire staff feel like they’re getting their fair share.

Using the Kickfin Toast integration, Bar Louie was able to automate the tip pool calculation process and send tips straight to employees in under two minutes – a potential annual savings of 15,000 labor hours across all locations.

>> See more customer success stories

Do you want to see these kinds of cost-saving results at your business? Let’s talk. Get a demo of Kickfin and see why restaurant owners and employees alike trust us to manage their tips.

Product and Company News

New Tip Calculation Features You Don’t Want To Miss

Big news: Kickfin’s best-in-class tip calculation tool has some exciting new bells and whistles.

If you’re already using Kickfin’s tip pool calculator, then you know how much time and hassle you’re saving by automating everything. (And if you’re not? Head over to our tip pooling software page to see how it works!)

As we partner with more restaurants to bring their tip management into the future, we’re continuing to innovate our product so we can address their biggest pain points.

In this case, that means enhancing our tip pooling features so you can auto-calculate tip amounts even for the most complex tip pool or share policies.

Check out a few of our latest features that will make tip calculations easier than ever.

🕺 Splitting large party tips

If your restaurant often hosts large parties, you know that the tip share can get confusing. Say one server is taking care of a party of 40 with a bartender assigned to only make drinks for that party. Meanwhile, the server has a few other two-top tables that are getting drinks from the main service bar. At the end of the night, how do you ensure that the large-party bartender gets their fair share of the tip out (without spending an hour on your phone calculator)?

Kickfin can now automate that process for you, alleviating questions from your event bartender and saving time and effort on the part of your managers.

📲 Seamless POS integrations

Kickfin is partnering with the top POS systems to integrate seamlessly with your existing restaurant tech — including Toast, Heartland, Shift4 and more.

DID YOU KNOW? Kickfin integration users get access to new product features first, like our new tip-out transparency tool — which allows your staff to log into their Kickfin accounts and see exactly how their tips have been split between team members. An added layer of visibility can go a long way in cultivating trust (and eliminating those pesky tip disputes).

💸 (Re)Allocation of manager tips

We’re always listening to feedback to improve the Kickfin experience, and this one goes out to all of our restaurant partners who asked us to streamline the manager tip reallocation process.

>>Learn more about managers and tipping laws

In most cases, managers are not allowed to earn tips since they are salaried employees. But we all know that managers often step in and take care of tables to help servers get out of the weeds. Well-meaning guests will most likely leave a tip, not knowing that the manager technically can’t accept them — so where does that money go?

Kickfin now features a default pool, where tips “paid” to a manager are automatically redistributed to tipped staff based on your restaurant’s tip policy.

🤓 Improved labor data accuracy

We all know how easy it is for an employee to forget to clock out after a long shift. And sure, they aren’t going to get paid for a 16-hour overnight shift, but when payday comes around, those extra hours create a nightmare for your payroll team.

With Kickfin, all employees are required to be clocked out in order to finalize payments — so you’ll catch the labor data mistake long before your payroll team has to sort it out.

🔑 Even better security

We’re committed to protecting your business (and your employees’ hard-earned money), so we’re adding an extra layer of security for certain transactions.

You can now enable double approval of payments that meet certain conditions:

First payment for new employees
Employees getting their first payout in X number of days
Employees receiving more than X payouts in a 24-hour period.

With these extra guardrails in place, you can always be sure that the right money is going to the right person. Reach out to our support team to configure your custom security measures.

Using Kickfin is a win-win for operators, managers, and employees alike. Restaurateurs save on cash delivery and labor costs, managers shave hours off their workload, and servers have the same instant payment that they’re used to — without the hassle and uncertainty of cash.

Want to learn more about Kickfin? Let us show you the ropes with a 10-minute demo!

Hiring, Training and Retention, Restaurant Management

Kickfin Announces Integration with Toast

You heard it here first: 2024 is the year of integrations.

First up — Toast! A trailblazer for cloud-based restaurant management technology, Toast is a favorite POS system for restaurants, food trucks, and bars. You probably know them best for being the first to create handheld POS devices, drastically changing the entire restaurant ecosystem. To make life easier for their customers, Toast partnered with Kickfin to create an integration that makes tip pooling, tip distribution, and calculation smoother.

As restaurant tech innovators ourselves, this partnership is the perfect fit for Kickfin.

Our goal at Kickfin is always to save time for managers, prevent loss for operators, and create more financial freedom for hospitality employees through pioneering technology that digitizes many of the analog processes that the restaurant industry is built on.

As a member of the Toast Partner Ecosystem, we’ll be able to deliver our product to Toast customers and modernize their tip management systems with ease. Using technology that they’re already familiar with, Toast customers can reap the benefits of Kickfin with minimal ramp-up upon implementation.

“No two restaurants split tips the same way, but invariably, it takes too long and involves too much risk,” said Justin Roberts, the co-CEO of Kickfin. “This integration allows for the utmost customization with a near-zero learning curve — truly the best of both worlds for restaurants that want to save time, reduce labor costs and make life easier for their team.”

And one of their partners is already enjoying the ROI with Kickfin. Bar Louie takes great pride in making tip distribution equitable for all of their employees, so they rely on a complex tip pooling system to ensure fair pay. Prior to using Kickfin, managers at each of their 60 locations spent 45 minutes at the end of every shift to make calculations and divvy out funds to all of their servers. Now, they’ve streamlined their tip-out process with Kickfin — and managers are doing the same work in less than a minute! That’s an annual average of 15,000 hours saved across their entire chain.

>> Hear more Kickfin success stories

After implementing Kickfin, managers can spend their time on what matters most: delivering excellent customer service. That means more table touches, more support for your staff, and more time to focus on server training.

With managers spending more time on the floor (instead of counting cash in the back), you’ll see better customer reviews, better service, and increased sales — all from digitizing your tip-outs with Kickfin.

We’re excited about our new partnership with Toast and the opportunity to make digital tipping a reality for their customers. For restaurants who aren’t using Toast, don’t worry! We look forward to providing similar integrations across the restaurant tech industry.

Want to see these results for yourself? Find out how to become a Kickfin integration partner or check out a demo of our platform.

Product and Company News

Kickfin Makes Inc.’s List of Top 10 Fastest Growing Companies in the Southwest

No growing pains here!

We’re thrilled to announce that Inc. listed Kickfin in their list of the top 10 fastest growing companies in the Southwest. (In fact, we earned the #1 spot in the software category and were listed as #9 overall!) We’re honored to be included alongside innovative companies that are making a big difference in our region.

Inc. measured Kickfin’s growth from 2020 to 2022 — which wasn’t an easy time for the restaurant industry, to say the least. In spite of the challenges posed by the pandemic, restaurant concepts across the country embraced Kickfin’s technology.

As a group, the 2024 Inc. honorees averaged 136% growth and created 17,606 new jobs over a two-year period. Individually, Kickfin grew by a whopping 1,304% (yes, really!).

We want to recognize and thank both our amazing customers and the Kickfin team for being part of our success story and allowing us to be a part of theirs.

Our Customers

For years, restaurants manually calculated and paid out cash tips — despite the increasing hassle and liability those old-school methods entail. It’s not because operators are tech-averse; there simply wasn’t a good way to automate the process that didn’t create new friction or require new workarounds.

That’s precisely why we developed Kickfin. Of course, we’re proud of what we built and the team behind it (more on that below). But we owe a great deal of our success to the customers who trusted us enough to give Kickfin a shot — especially those early adopters who are now some of our longest-standing customers.

There’s a leap of faith involved when you partner with a vendor and layer in new technology, particularly when it impacts something as important and sensitive as how you pay your people. We don’t take that lightly, and we are incredibly grateful for the opportunity to serve each and every customer who’s been on this journey with us.

>> Hear from our customers about their experiences with Kickfin

Our Team

Every person on our team wholeheartedly believes in our mission and vision for the future. In short: we’re here to make the tip management process insanely easy for everyone so that paying out your people is (almost!) as great as getting paid.

As backstory: Our co-founders, Brian and Justin, came up with the idea for Kickfin while dining out together and noticing that an armored car was dropping off cash. They asked why a restaurant would need a cash delivery when most patrons pay by card; the manager explained the cash was needed to pay out tips at the end of the shift. The inefficiency (and expense, and risk…) of that process was a lightbulb moment for Brian and Justin.

They set out to build a team who not only understood the problem, but could think critically and creatively about a solution — and bring it to life.

From sales and marketing to product and support, every Kickfin employee has had a hand in the growth and success of our company, thanks to their passion for our purpose and their commitment to being best in class.

We’re proud of what we’ve achieved thus far, and we’re excited to continue collaborating with our customers, innovating on their behalf, and taking Kickfin to the next level together. Onward and upward!

What is the Tip Credit? Your Guide to Restaurant Employee Minimum Wage