The day that an Arkansas waitress got a $4,400 tip from the “$100 Dinner Club” would have been the finest day of her life if she had earned it through the $100 Dinner Club. When the management of the restaurant dropped hints that Ryan Brandt could only retain 20% of the tip and that the rest of the money would be split among the other members of the staff, Ryan Brandt immediately changed his plans and intended to use the money to pay off his student loans. After being terminated for breaking the restaurant’s tipping rules, Brandt was required to turn over the bulk of the cash in order to get his money back.
Thanks to the proprietor of a local real estate agency, Grant Wise, the members of the “$100 Dinner Club” were able to get together for a meal and a get-together at the Oven and Tap in Bentonville, Arkansas. Each person contributed a tip of one hundred dollars.
Wise called the restaurant in advance of the occasion to check and make sure that the wait staff did not divide the tips. The management surprised the waitress, Ryan Brandt, by giving her a cheque for $4,400, which was then split among the waitress and the other members of the crew by the manager. Ryan Brandt broke down in tears.
When the management of the restaurant found out that Brandt had been given such a large amount of tips, they informed her that she would be required to divide some of the money up and give it to the other employees who worked at the restaurant. The management of the restaurant also informed Brandt that she would be required to pay taxes on the money. This was a request that had never been made before at the restaurant where she had worked for the previous three and a half years; in fact, it had never been made at any restaurant in the world.
Brandt said that in the three and a half years that she had worked there, she had never been asked to divide her tip before. “I was informed that I was going to be passing my cash over to my shift manager and that I would be taking home 20%,” Brandt told FOX 59, saying that she had never been asked to divide her tip before.
Brandt, who is in the early stages of her 30s and studies Spanish at the University of Arkansas, was meant to utilize the money to pay off her college debt until she was left saddened to give up the significant sum to her superiors. Brandt is now in the process of paying off her college debt. Instead, she was compelled to pay up the money she had been holding onto.
After a few days, Brandt was terminated from her position at the restaurant for ‘violating’ its regulations by alerting Wise about the restaurant’s policy on obtaining tips. The guidelines stated that employees were not permitted to discuss the restaurant’s policy with customers. When Brandt told Wise about the restaurant’s policy on taking tips, he breached a guideline that prohibited him from doing so.
During the COVID-19 outbreak and the worldwide lockdown, Wise saw that a great number of restaurant waiters were afflicted and significantly harmed by conditions relating to COVID. Wise noted that many restaurant waiters are now suffering. Because of this, he came up with the idea of the “$100 Dinner Club.” When he was in Arkansas to hold a real estate conference, he chose the Oven and Tap, one of their most frequented restaurants that offers sit-down service, as the location for the event.
After confirming with the management of the restaurant that they did not have a policy on tip sharing, Wise and his wife went ahead and executed their plan.
When Wise found out that the restaurant management had forced Brandt to share her gratuity with the other employees, the sweet moment abruptly turned into a terrible one. She lost her job not long after that. Instead of being able to speak with the proprietor of the restaurant, he was forced to send her a text message.
When he went back to the Oven and Tap restaurant to get his money back and personally present it to Brandt, that’s when he found out that she had been dismissed from her job. On December 7th, he posted about the occasion on his various social media platforms.
On the GoFundMe page, Wise said that her “one and only objective” was to assist the woman in “getting through this experience with the least amount of stress and worry possible and onto whatever her next opportunity may be.”
Wise has not too long ago posted an update on his social media pages, in which he said that Brandt has just begun working at a new restaurant after accepting a job offer from another establishment on December 8th.
At a total of $8,700, Grant Wise made the decision to pull the plug on the GoFundMe effort.