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 for the participating employees, every participant receives the full applicable minimum in cash, and state law permits the arrangement.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.
• Each pool’s participants, contributions, distributions and use of a tip credit are separately documented; a credited employee’s tips are not routed to ineligible back-of-house recipients.Why: 29 CFR 531.54 permits different lawful arrangements; a separate no-credit pool does not categorically invalidate a credited pool elsewhere in the outlet or workweek. The actual contributions, participants and state restrictions control.
• New York: pool participation is limited to eligible food-service workers or service employees who perform, or assist in performing, personal service to patrons as a regular part of their duties; ordinary kitchen-only staff are excluded.Why: 12 NYCRR 146-2.14 contains an illustrative, nonexclusive list. Paying full cash wages does not remove the state’s occupation-based pool restrictions.
• Sous chefs, kitchen managers and working leads receive no tip-pool share when they meet the complete federal manager/supervisor duties test, and any stricter state restriction is applied.Why: 29 CFR 531.52(b)(2) and 541.100(a)(2)–(4) require primary-duty management, direction of two or more employees or equivalent, and hire/fire authority or recommendations with particular weight. A title or scheduling authority alone is not enough.
• 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.
• Bakery machines are restricted by the exact HO11 machine and task rules, with any exception documented before a minor is assigned.Why: 29 CFR 570.62 permits qualifying portable household/comparable countertop mixers (not hardwired, at most ½ horsepower and five-quart bowl; not meat/poultry processing) and operation of specified guarded pizza-dough rollers. Roller setup, adjustment, repair, oiling and cleaning remain prohibited.
• 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 perform only permitted kitchen tasks, with no baking and cooking limited to the regulatory grills and automatic basket-lowering/lifting fryers. Freezer/meat-cooler assignments are restricted to the narrow permitted brief-entry exception.Why: 29 CFR 570.33–.34 — occasional momentary freezer entry to retrieve items is permitted; working in freezers or meat coolers is not. Equipment and cooking duties must match the listed exceptions, not merely the employee’s job title.
• 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.
• Exact recorded work time is paid as the audit practice, and California meal-period punches are never rounded.Why: Donohue v. AMN Services (2021) bars California meal rounding. Camp’s 2022 Court of Appeal ruling is under California Supreme Court review (S277518), still pending on the court’s October 16, 2026 list. Federal 29 CFR 785.48(b) permits neutral rounding that does not undercompensate over time; exact-time payment avoids that factual dispute.
• 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 the required regular-rate premium for noncompliant breaks, capped at one meal-period hour and one rest-period hour per workday.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 is supported by actual management responsibilities, staffing authority, direction of two or more full-time employees or equivalent, and salary compliance; line work is assessed in the full primary-duty analysis.Why: 29 CFR 541.100, 541.106 and 541.700 — federal law allows concurrent management and production work. Time is a factor, not a categorical majority rule. A separate learned-professional claim requires its own educational and duties elements.
• A working sous chef is evaluated under every executive element, including whether management remains the primary duty while cooking; the title and incidental directions to coworkers are insufficient.Why: 29 CFR 541.106 and 541.700 — majority cooking time alone does not decide the federal exemption. California separately requires more than half the time in exempt duties.
• A chef paid by the day or event is treated as non-exempt unless a valid guaranteed weekly salary arrangement satisfies the salary-basis regulations and all other exemption elements.Why: Helix Energy Solutions Group v. Hewitt (2023); 29 CFR 541.604(b) — high aggregate day-rate earnings alone are not a salary. The regulation permits qualifying guarantees with the required reasonable relationship to actual earnings.
• 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, subject to Wage Order 5’s narrow customary-hand-tool exception for employees earning at least twice the minimum wage; required uniforms remain employer-provided and maintained.
• 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; confirm the applicable current regional and hours-based tier 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.