Jessica Biel’s Restaurant Sued for Withholding $400K from Restaurant Employees

Jessica Biel and her business partners at Au Fudge restaurant are being sued for withholding over $430,000 in tips from employees.

According to The Blast, nine former employees are suing Biel and her business partners at Au Fudge, a kid-friendly restaurant in West Hollywood, CA.

The employees claim the restaurant earned the bulk of their money through “buyouts” and private events. According to court documents, the restaurant routinely charged clients a 22% gratuity for those events.

According to a deposition filed a former Director of Events at Au Fudge, “every private event customer” she dealt with believed that the gratuity would go directly to the employees who worked the events. Alexandra Desage also stated she “cannot remember a time” when a private event customer tipped above the “gratuity” line item.

Desage says she confronted co-owner Jon Rollo (chef, owner, and founder of the restaurant chain Greenleaf Gourmet Chopshop) about the problem. Desage says she told Rollo she believed that it was “against the law for Au Fudge’s customers to pay a gratuity and then have the restaurant fail to transfer the gratuity to employees who had direct contact with the customers.”