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My workplace is a combination restaurant and wine/cheese shop. The people that work at the cheese counter also make cheese boards for the tables in the restaurants. Patrons often come up to the counter to get recommendations and samples and also request that the mongers come to their table to assist them in placing the order. It is also part of the mongers job to take the boards out to tables and explain them.

Sometimes they have to clear dishes, or flag down a server to add requests. The monger are all front of house, customers come to them for retail help and interface with them, they are nto behind a kitchen wall, but very accessible. They are sometimes the only service the table needs besides drinks. There are times when tables are just getting cheese and chocolate boards delivered by mongers and leave a tip that is then going to the server.

The restaurant has a mandatory tip pool where tips are split between servers, bussers, runners, and hostesses; however the counter service mongers are only allowed to have tips given to them by retail customers. When management is approached about including them in the tip pool because they help table service they are denied, being told that it is illegal to include food preparers in a tip pool.

Is it okay to deny some people out of their tableside tips because they also prepare food in the front of house? There are times when patrons think they are giving tips to the person presenting the cheese board, but they are not. Is it legal to deny some people that are in the chain of service?

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