🍽️ Food Service
Food Service HR built for California compliance.
California food service employers are the #1 target for PAGA lawsuits — meal break violations, split-shift premium failures, tip credit mistakes, and overtime miscalculations. Easeworks provides the compliance protection your restaurant needs to stay open and stay profitable.
Coverage
What we handle for food service employers.
- CA Meal & Rest Break Compliance
- Tip Reporting & Minimum Wage Tracking
- Split-Shift Premium Calculations
- Food Handler Certification Management
Exposure
Common challenges.
- Meal and rest break compliance for kitchen and front-of-house staff on split shifts
- California tip reporting rules and interaction with minimum wage requirements
- Split-shift premium calculations when employees work non-consecutive hours
- Overtime calculations for tipped employees and workers at multiple locations
- PAGA lawsuits — food service is the most-sued industry in California for wage-and-hour violations
- CalOSHA food safety and workplace injury prevention for kitchen environments
Response
How Easeworks responds.
- Automated meal and rest break tracking with manager alerts for approaching deadlines
- California tip reporting compliance and minimum wage reconciliation system
- Split-shift premium auto-calculation built into payroll processing
- Multi-location overtime tracking for employees working across California restaurants
- Proactive PAGA audit covering all common food service wage-and-hour exposure points
- Kitchen safety and food handler certification tracking with renewal alerts
PAGA exposure
Food Service PAGA risk: what to watch.
Food service is the most-sued California industry for PAGA violations. Split-shift premiums, missed meal breaks during service rushes, and tip reporting errors each generate penalties of $100–$200 per employee per pay period — and class actions in restaurants often cover hundreds of workers.
Case file
Multi-Location Restaurant Group
A 12-location California restaurant group eliminated meal break violations and reduced PAGA exposure to zero across all locations in 6 months.
- Zero meal break violations across 12 locations
- 100% split-shift premium compliance achieved
- PAGA audit cleared with no actionable findings
- 60% reduction in employee turnover after compliance improvements
On the record
What employers say.
"We got hit with a PAGA claim for split-shift premiums we didn't even know we owed. Easeworks cleaned up our payroll, automated the calculations, and now we sleep at night."
Ready to reduce food service HR risk?
Start with a conversation or a risk assessment — we'll tell you where the exposure is before you commit to anything.