17 Locations, One Tip Standard: Every Tip Paid Through Payroll
Hai Hospitality pays every tip — cash and credit alike — on the employee's paycheck. PayDay Portal makes that model work: unified tip calculation, Team Up banquet payouts, shift-specific distribution, and multi-state compliance across all 17 locations.
About Hai Hospitality
From a converted house in Austin to 17 locations across the country.
Hai Hospitality started in 2003, when Chef Tyson Cole opened Uchi in a converted house in Austin, Texas. Two years later he was named Best New Chef by Food & Wine, and in 2011 he won the James Beard Award for Best Chef, Southwest — one of the only sushi chefs ever to receive it.
Today the group operates 17 locations under five concepts — Uchi, Uchiko, Uchiba, Oheya, and the Asian smokehouse concept Loro — spanning multiple states from its Austin roots to cities including Miami, Denver, and Houston. Every location runs its own kitchen, its own floor, and its own tip pool, but all of them share one standard for how tips get calculated and paid.
The Challenge
A banquet-heavy calendar, and 17 locations that each needed the same rules applied consistently.
Hai Hospitality does not use pay cards or other digital payout methods. Every tip — cash and credit card alike — is paid out on the employee's paycheck. That decision simplifies the employee experience, but it raises the bar on the back end: cash and credit tips have to be calculated together, correctly, every pay period, across every location, before payroll runs.
Cash and Credit Tips Had to Reconcile as One Number
Paying every tip through payroll only works if cash and credit card tips are calculated together with total accuracy. Any gap between what was collected and what was paid becomes a payroll problem, not a shift-end problem.
Banquets and Private Events Needed Team-Based Math
Uchi and Loro both host banquets, large events, and private bookings regularly. Those aren't single-server tables — they're teams of servers, bartenders, and support staff working one event together, and the tip math needed to reflect that.
Distribution Had to Follow the Shift, Not a Flat Split
With 17 locations running overlapping shifts, lunch and dinner services, and staff who move between roles, a flat or location-wide split doesn't hold up. Tips needed to be distributed based on the shift each employee actually worked.
One Group, Several States, One Standard
Operating multiple concepts across multiple states means multiple wage and tip regulations. Hai Hospitality needed every location compliant with its local rules while still running on one consistent group-wide system.
"Every location runs its own kitchen, its own floor, and its own tip pool — but all of them share one standard for how tips get calculated and paid."
About Hai Hospitality
The Solution
Four capabilities, configured to match how Hai Hospitality actually runs its floors.
Unified Cash and Credit Tip Calculation
What it solves: a payout model where every tip lands on the paycheck — which only works if cash and credit tips are calculated together, exactly.
PayDay Portal calculates cash tips alongside credit card tips as a single distribution, then delivers the combined total through payroll. There's no separate cash-handling process running alongside the card-tip math — one calculation, one payout, one paycheck line.
- Cash and credit tips calculated together as one distribution
- The combined total delivered through payroll
- No separate cash-handling process to reconcile
Team Up for Banquets and Private Events
What it solves: banquets and private bookings are team efforts that don't fit single-server tip tracking.
Team Up lets managers group the staff who worked a banquet, large event, or private booking, and splits the tips across that team. A private dinner at Uchi or a banquet at Loro gets treated as the shared effort it is, instead of getting forced into single-server tracking that doesn't fit the shift.
- Managers group the staff who worked an event in a few clicks
- Tips split across the team that actually did the work
- Banquets, large events, and private bookings all handled the same way
Shift-Specific Distribution
What it solves: flat or location-wide splits that don't hold up across overlapping shifts, double services, and staff covering multiple roles.
Tips are distributed based on the specific shift each employee worked, not a blanket location split. That holds up across lunch and dinner services, overlapping shifts, and staff covering multiple roles in the same week — at every one of the 17 locations.
- Distribution tied to the shift actually worked
- Holds up across lunch and dinner services and overlapping shifts
- Handles staff covering multiple roles in the same week
Multi-State, Multi-Concept Compliance
What it solves: five concepts across multiple states means multiple sets of wage and tip regulations — and one group standard that still has to hold.
PayDay Portal applies the correct wage and tip rules by location and state in the background, so every one of the 17 locations runs compliant with its own jurisdiction while the group operates on one standard platform.
- Wage and tip rules applied automatically by state and location
- Every location compliant with its own jurisdiction
- One group-wide standard, from Austin to Miami to Denver
The Results
One tip standard, 17 locations, every tip on the paycheck.
Operational Efficiency
- Cash and credit tips calculated as one number instead of two reconciled separately
- Every tip — cash or card — reaches the employee through payroll, with no separate payout process to manage
- One calculation engine runs the same way at every location
Team-Based Payouts
- Banquet and private event tips split by team through Team Up, replacing manual tracking
- Distribution follows the shift actually worked, across all 17 locations
- Overlapping shifts, double services, and multi-role staff handled without workarounds
Compliance and Consistency
- Wage and tip rules applied automatically by state and location
- One standard for tip calculation and payout across five concepts and multiple states
- A model built for growth as Hai Hospitality adds locations and concepts
Why It Works
Three things that make the Hai Hospitality setup hold up across 17 locations and five concepts.
The Payout Model Matches the Choice, Not a Workaround
Paying every tip through payroll — no cards, no separate digital wallet — only works if the underlying calculation is exact. PayDay Portal builds the cash-and-credit reconciliation into the same engine that runs the payout.
Team Up Handles Service the Way It Actually Happens
Banquets, large events, and private bookings are team efforts. Team Up attributes tips to the group that did the work, not to whichever system default assumes one server per table.
Compliance Travels With the Group, Not With Each GM
Five concepts and multiple states mean different rules in different places. Hai Hospitality runs one platform, and the platform carries the compliance load location by location.
Running tip pools across multiple locations yourself? See how GratShare tip pooling works, or explore tip compliance by state.
