Golden Road Brewing and Mohawk Bend Served Lawsuit Over Unpaid Wages

Following a summer full of tumultuous wage discussions across the restaurant industry, it seems that the LLC behind Golden Road Brewing could be in for a particularly bumpy fall. Beer and Food Management LLC, fronted by affable craft beer bar and brewery owner Tony Yanow, has just been slapped with a lawsuit outlining an alleged history of unpaid wages.

The suit, filed Tuesday in state court, comes from a former employee named Perry Jackson who claims that he and other servers were routinely denied mandated breaks and meals, and were also unfairly compensated (or in some cases not at all) for actual hours worked.

In the claims — first detailed on Law360 — Jackson takes aim at Beer and Food Management's craft beer empire as a whole, including Mohawk Bend, Tony’s Darts Away, and Golden Road. The former employee alleges that scheduling quirks across the board often kept employees at or just under the lawful minimums required for meal breaks, and even when those minimums were met, managers discouraged employees from taking that time (and didn’t pay them for the worked time when they agreed to skip a meal). Furthermore, the suit alleges that Jackson, as well as other former employees, were never paid out even after being terminated or quitting.

The suit comes at a tough time city-wide for restaurant owners, many of whom are already bristling back at the idea of an eventual increased minimum wage to $15. Yanow himself has come out against the measure, saying that it could in effect make him likely to rethink the city of L.A. for any upcoming businesses he’d plan to open. This, of course, is in addition to the ongoing debate about restaurant health care surcharges — which some have called price fixing.

Update 10/22/16: An update from Beer and Food Management LLC indicates that this lawsuit has been dismissed.