Kitchen & Stewarding Wage & Hour Audit Checklist

The back of the house carries its own wage-and-hour profile, distinct from the dining room it feeds: tip pools that are lawful only without a tip credit, the most-cited child-labor machines in hospitality, prep and knife-kit setup that starts the workday before the first punch, and working sous chefs misclassified as exempt. This checklist covers main kitchens, prep and butchery, pastry, banquet kitchens, room-service production, and stewarding/dish. Check items off as you verify them — progress saves in this browser — and items flagged in bold apply only in the named jurisdictions. The page is print-optimized for a line-by-line walkthrough.

Tip pools & service charges in the back of house#

• Cooks, dishwashers, and stewards share in a tip pool only where no tip credit is taken on anyone — every participant in that pool paid the full minimum wage in cash.Why: the 2018 FLSA amendments permit nontraditional back-of-house pools only without a tip credit (85 FR 86756); mixing BOH into a tip-credit pool voids the credit for all participants.
• Tip-credit pools and no-credit BOH pools are never blended within the same workweek or outlet.Why: a single architecture must govern the week — running a credited front-of-house pool alongside a BOH pool that depends on no credit collapses both; see tip pooling.
• New York: back-of-house staff are excluded from tip pools regardless of the credit, and only the listed tipped occupations may share.Why: 12 NYCRR 146-2.14 limits tip sharing to food-service workers in the chain of direct service — New York's occupation list is narrower than the federal no-credit rule.
• No sous chef, kitchen manager, or working lead with hire/fire input or scheduling authority receives anything from any tip pool.Why: FLSA §3(m)(2)(B); DOL Opinion Letter FLSA2025-1 — anyone who meets the executive duties test is excluded, even when they work the line all shift.
• Kitchen shares of banquet or event service charges are coded as wages and folded into the regular rate for overtime in the week earned.Why: 29 CFR 531.55 — mandatory service charges are wages, not tips; a distributed kitchen share raises every overtime premium that week.

Minors & the hazardous orders#

• No employee under 18 operates, feeds, sets up, adjusts, cleans, or repairs a power-driven meat slicer or other meat-processing machine — enforced by red "NO ONE UNDER 18" labels and by training the chefs who hand out closing tasks.Why: FLSA Hazardous Order 10 covers the whole machine cycle, including the closing-shift "break it down and wash it" assignment, and applies no matter what is being sliced.
• No one under 18 operates commercial dough mixers or other power-driven bakery machines.Why: Hazardous Order 11 bars minors from bakery machines outright; pastry and bake shops are dense with prohibited equipment.
• No one under 18 operates or unloads a trash compactor or baler; 16- and 17-year-olds load one only on a machine that meets the ANSI standard, cannot cycle while loaded, and carries the posted notice.Why: Hazardous Order 12 and FLSA §13(c)(5) — a stewarding teen pushing the compactor button at the end of a banquet is a textbook violation.
• 14- and 15-year-olds are confined to permitted kitchen tasks — dishwashing, toasters, milkshake blenders, coffee grinders — with no baking and cooking only at flame-free electric/gas grills or basket-lowering fryers.Why: 29 CFR 570.34 lists the narrow tasks this age band may perform; freezers, meat coolers, and most machines are off the list entirely.
• Power-driven shop equipment a kitchen or steward might reach — band saws, grinders, and the like — is locked out from every minor.Why: Hazardous Orders 5 and 8 bar power-driven woodworking and metal-forming/shearing machines for anyone under 18, including a "shadowing" intern.

Continuous workday & timekeeping#

• Clock-in happens before knife-kit setup, station mise en place, uniform/apron change where required on premises, and the pre-shift lineup — not after.Why: the continuous workday runs from the first principal activity — prepping a station is integral and indispensable to the cook's work (IBP v. Alvarez; 29 CFR 790.6).
• Auto-deducted meal breaks are audited against reality: a line cook who works through a rush meal is paid, and interrupted breaks are flagged and restored.Why: an unpaid meal requires complete relief from duty (29 CFR 785.19); systematic auto-deduction over actual worked breaks is the recurring off-the-clock theory — see off the clock.
• California: timeclock rounding is switched off in favor of pay-to-the-minute, and meal-period punches are never rounded.Why: Camp v. Home Depot (2024) and Donohue v. AMN (2021) — California rejects rounding where exact punches exist, and meal punches carry a rebuttable presumption of a violation.
• Pre-shift tastings, mandatory line-ups, and post-shift cleaning and breakdown are inside paid time, not unpaid "rounding" at the shift edges.Why: 29 CFR 785.11–.13 — work suffered or permitted is compensable, and end-of-shift sanitation is a principal activity, not a commute.

Breaks & solo coverage#

• California: line cooks, prep, and dish receive duty-free 30-minute meal periods and 10-minute rest breaks on the Wage Order schedule, with a premium hour at the regular rate of compensation for any missed or late one.Why: Cal. Lab. Code §§512, 226.7; IWC Wage Order 5 §§11–12 — Ferra v. Loews (2021) sets the premium at the full regular rate of compensation, not the base hourly wage.
• Solo-coverage stations — an overnight steward, a single banquet cook — are rostered so the employee is fully relieved for the meal, or the meal is paid.Why: 29 CFR 785.19 — a cook who must mind the line or answer the dish pit during the "break" is working, and the time is compensable.
• Second meal periods are provided on long banquet-production days where state law requires them.Why: California requires a second meal period on shifts over ten hours (Lab. Code §512), and a high-volume catering push is exactly when it gets skipped.

Pay structure & classification#

• Kitchen incentives — productivity, attendance, perfect-week, and retention bonuses — are folded into the regular rate for overtime in the week earned.Why: 29 CFR 778.211 — promised incentive pay is non-discretionary and raises every overtime premium; run it through the regular-rate calculator.
• A cook working two rates in one week (line cook plus banquet rate) is paid the weighted-average regular rate, not the lower "home" rate.Why: 29 CFR 778.115 — multi-rate weeks default to the weighted average; paying overtime on the lower rate underpays every long week.
• The executive chef's exemption rests on supervision, the brigade, P&L, and menu authority — not on culinary artistry — and erodes where the chef is the primary line cook at a small kitchen.Why: 29 CFR part 541 — rest the analysis on the executive duties, not creativity; a cooking chef at a small property fails the primary-duty test.
• A sous chef who cooks most of the shift with incidental direction of two cooks is treated as non-exempt, or a real supervisory layer is built.Why: 29 CFR 541.106 — cooking as the primary duty defeats the executive exemption regardless of title; the working sous chef is the classic miss (see the exemption checker).
• No chef or kitchen manager is paid a day rate or per-event rate while treated as exempt.Why: Helix Energy v. Hewitt (2023) — a day rate is not a salary basis at any total, so the exemption fails outright.
• California: any kitchen exemption is tested quantitatively — more than half of the workweek in exempt duties, measured.Why: Cal. Lab. Code §515; IWC Wage Order 5 — California counts floor time with a stopwatch, and peak-season line work flips a marginal chef to non-exempt.

Deductions & equipment#

• Knife kits, tools, and required uniforms (chef whites) are not charged in a way that cuts wages below the minimum wage or overtime.Why: 29 CFR 531.35–.37 — wages must be paid free and clear; the cost of tools of the trade is a kickback when it invades the statutory floor (see minimum wage).
• Breakage, walkout, and inventory-shortage chargebacks are never deducted from cooks' or stewards' pay below minimum wage or overtime.Why: 29 CFR 531.35 — shifting business losses onto the employee's wage is a prohibited kickback under federal law, and several states bar it outright.
• California: the employer bears the full cost of required tools and uniforms, reimbursed regardless of wage level.Why: Cal. Lab. Code §2802 and Wage Order 5 §9 require the employer to provide and maintain required uniforms and indemnify necessary expenditures, with no minimum-wage offset.
• New York: uniform-maintenance pay is paid for chef whites and required garments the hotel does not launder, unless the wash-and-wear exemption is genuinely met.Why: 12 NYCRR 146-1.7 — weekly maintenance pay is owed when the employer does not launder required uniforms; the figure is unverified here, so confirm the current rate on the New York page.

Scope notes#

Unflagged items state the federal baseline; bold-flagged items apply only in the named states. This checklist quantifies nothing on its own — pair classification findings with the exemption checker, multi-rate and incentive weeks with the regular-rate calculator, and pool questions with the tip-pool architect. For the underlying law, see tip pooling, minors, exemptions, and off-the-clock work. Educational tool, not legal advice — see the disclaimer.