104 | Massachusetts Wage & Hour Peculiarities, 2025 ed. © 2025 Seyfarth Shaw LLP [other] employees . . . sufficiently to characterize them as having managerial responsibility.”598 Applying similar reasoning in Godt v. Anthony’s Pier 4, Inc., the court declared that it was unclear whether wine stewards had managerial responsibilities when they handled employee scheduling, set floor plans, fielded customer complaints, and corrected the work of other wait staff.599 The court found “a material dispute of fact as to whether the duties that the wine stewards perform in addition to serving wine are sufficiently supervisory or managerial so as to preclude them from the tip sharing.”600 In contrast, yet citing to the Mouiny and Godt decisions, the court in DePina v. Marriott International, Inc. found that banquet captains had sufficient managerial responsibilities to make their participation in a tip pool improper where they “directed the work of servers and apportioned work among them” and “supervised banquet events.”601 In Matamoros v. Starbucks Corporation, the First Circuit upheld the decision of a federal district court, finding that shift supervisors in coffee shops who spend a majority of their time directly serving customers could not share in tips because they also performed such duties as directing employees to work stations, opening and closing the store, opening the store’s safe, and handling and accounting for cash.602 The Matamoros court emphasized that “if an employee has any managerial responsibility, she does not qualify as ‘wait staff’ eligible to participate in tips pools” under the Tip Statute.603 The 2020 amendment to the definition of “wait staff employee” may alter this analysis.604 Instead of wholly exempting wait staff employees who perform managerial responsibilities at any time, the amendment seemingly allows employees who have managerial duties on some days to participate in a tip pool on days in which they have no managerial responsibilities but serve food or drink or clear tables. Given these rulings, employers should consider carefully before extending participation in tip pools to employees with even very limited authority over their co-workers. Doing so may run the risk of litigation from other employees who believe that a supervisor is improperly sharing in their tips. Employers also should note that the law now applies outside the food and beverage industry and protects “service employees” of other occupations in which receiving tips is customary during 598 Id. (emphasis added) (also noting that one should not “mistakenly equate ‘supervisory responsibility’ with ‘managerial responsibility’”); see also Belghiti v. Select Rests., Inc., Civ. No. 10-12049-GAO, 2014 WL 5846303, *2 (D. Mass. Nov. 12, 2014) (on reconsideration, affirming original grant of summary judgment and finding that while banquet captains and maître d’s acted like a “quarterback on a football team,” there was no evidence that they performed “core management functions” such as “hiring, setting wages, maintaining records, recommending promotions, or administering discipline”). 599 Godt v. Anthony’s Pier 4, Inc., No. SUCV2007-3919-BLS1, at 8 (Mass. Super. Mar. 24, 2009) (Hinkle, J.) (wine stewards also accessed computers to void and change customer orders, ensured that the restaurant was running smoothly, assigned side work, issued server reports at the end of a shift, closed the restaurant, accessed the safe, locked up, set the alarm, monitored the wine stock, and issued new wait staff lockers, uniforms, and side towels). 600 Id. 601 DePina, No. SUCV2003-5434-G, at 15 (finding “some” managerial responsibility even though it was “undisputed that [the banquet captains] did not influence employment shifts, hours, or decisions”). 602 Matamoros, 699 F.3d at 137 (holding shift supervisors had managerial responsibility for purposes of the Tip Statute). 603 Id. at 134 (emphasis added). 604 St. 2020, ch. 358, § 77.
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