Custom Tip Policies and Weekly Pay Across Five Concepts and Three States
Rooted Hospitality Group scaled concept-specific tip configurations, multi-state compliance, shift-to-shift workflows, weekly payouts through payroll, and a bilingual employee mobile app with PayDay Portal.
About Rooted Hospitality Group
Five concepts, three states, one operations team.
Founded in 2009 by David and Rachel Hersh, Rooted Hospitality Group has grown from a single waterfront restaurant in Hampton Bays into a portfolio of five distinct concepts: RUMBA, Cowfish, flora, Fauna, and AVO TACO. Recognized as a Top Workplace, the group operates across the Hamptons, Long Island, and Queens, with a Metairie, Louisiana location, and is opening flora in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Different brands, different service models, different states, different rules, and one operations team trying to run tips and weekly pay across all of it. Rooted Hospitality Group's mission centers on enriching lives through genuine hospitality and servant leadership — a mission that extends to the team through pay transparency and a consistent, accurate experience for every employee, in every concept and every state.
The Challenge
Five concepts, three states, one operations team.
A hibachi-paced quick-serve at AVO TACO does not tip like a waterfront fine-dining room at flora. Different brands, different service models, different states, different rules, and one operations team trying to run tips and weekly pay across all of it. That combination created five clear problems.
Five Concepts, Five Different Ways to Tip
A hibachi-paced quick-serve at AVO TACO does not tip like a waterfront fine-dining room at flora. A one-size tip template did not fit either one, let alone all five concepts at once.
Federal, New York, and Louisiana Rules, All at Once
Tip credits, tip pooling, service charges, and reporting differ by jurisdiction. Staying compliant while opening new locations put real weight on the operations team.
A Workforce That Moved Shift to Shift, Across Concepts
Hourly teams work shift to shift, sometimes across brands. Reconciling who worked what, and getting them paid correctly, had no single source of truth.
Tips That Did Not Move as Fast as the Team
Pay transparency and weekly access to tips are not nice-to-haves at this scale. They are how a growing hospitality group keeps great people through a growth phase.
A Bilingual Team Needed a Bilingual Experience
A significant portion of the workforce is more comfortable in Spanish than English. Without a bilingual pay experience, part of the team was left without full visibility into their own pay.
"Rooted Hospitality Group's mission centers on enriching lives through genuine hospitality and servant leadership. That mission extends to the team: pay transparency and a consistent, accurate experience for every employee, in every concept and every state."
About Rooted Hospitality Group
The Solution
Five distinct PayDay Portal features, configured for how Rooted Hospitality Group actually operates.
Customized Tip Policies by Concept
What it solves: five concepts with five different service models cannot run on one generic tip template. Forcing a single policy on every brand breaks the model that makes each concept work.
PayDay Portal supports a different tip configuration for each RHG brand and each location. Nothing gets shoehorned, and nothing gets worked around. As RHG adds new restaurants, including RUMBA Metairie and flora Charlotte, new locations and concepts stand up inside PayDay Portal without rebuilding the operation from scratch.
- A distinct tip configuration for every concept and every location
- Tip pools, tip-outs, and service-charge distributions that match each concept's real service model
- New openings stand up on the same trusted engine, without a rebuild
Multi-State Compliance
What it solves: operating in New York and Louisiana, and soon North Carolina, means multiple sets of wage and tip rules. Putting that compliance burden on operators is a real risk.
PayDay Portal keeps RHG aligned with federal mandates and the specific wage and tip regulations that govern New York and Louisiana. Operators get the controls, the audit trail, and the confidence that comes from knowing the platform is keeping the rules straight, so managers can stay on the floor instead of becoming wage-and-hour experts.
- Automated compliance for federal, New York, and Louisiana wage and tip rules
- Tip credits, tip pooling, and service-charge handling built for each jurisdiction
- An audit trail and reporting operators can rely on as the group enters new states
Shift-to-Shift Workflows
What it solves: hospitality teams do not work in tidy two-week cycles. They work shifts, and tip reconciliation needs to move at the same pace.
PayDay Portal's workflows mirror how the working day actually moves, supporting employees from clock-in to clock-out and giving managers the visibility to reconcile tips quickly and accurately at the end of every shift, every day, across every location. That includes staff who move shift to shift across concepts, which the platform tracks without manual cleanup.
- Tip reconciliation that follows the shift, not a fixed pay cycle
- Manager visibility into tips at clock-out, every shift, every location
- Tracking for staff who move across concepts, without manual cleanup
Weekly Tip Payouts Through Payroll
What it solves: team members should not wait on money they already earned, and the back office should not be reconciling two separate systems for tips and wages.
RHG pays tips out weekly, in step with payroll. Every tip dollar earned at an RHG restaurant flows through the same trusted pipe as wages, so team members are not waiting on the money they earned, and the back office is not reconciling two different systems. One paycheck, one source of truth, one weekly cadence, every week.
- Tips paid out weekly, on the same cadence as payroll
- One pipeline for tips and wages instead of two separate systems
- A single source of truth for what team members earned and what hit their paycheck
Bilingual Employee Mobile App
What it solves: a significant portion of the RHG workforce is more comfortable in Spanish than English. Without a bilingual experience, part of the team has less access to their own pay information.
Every RHG employee accesses their tips, hours, and pay through the PayDay Portal mobile application, available on both the App Store and Google Play, in English and Spanish. Whichever language an employee is most comfortable in, the experience meets them there, which makes the platform genuinely usable for every member of the team, not just part of it.
- A full mobile experience in English and Spanish, on iOS and Android
- Employee access to tips, hours, and pay history on demand
- The same pay experience for every team member, regardless of language
The Results
Coordinated tip operations built to scale.
Operational Efficiency
- A repeatable launch playbook for every new opening, instead of a one-off lift each time
- Managers spend less time reconciling spreadsheets and more time on the floor
- Tips and payroll run through one system instead of two
- Shift-to-shift reconciliation happens quickly, every day, across every concept
Compliance and Scale
- Each concept keeps the tip policy that fits how it actually runs
- Each state, New York and Louisiana, stays inside its own wage and tip rules
- New locations launch on the same trusted platform the established restaurants already run on
- Controls and an audit trail are built in as the math runs
Employee Experience
- Team members get paid accurately, weekly, on terms they can see for themselves
- Bilingual mobile app available in English and Spanish on iOS and Android
- Full visibility into tips, hours, and pay across five concepts and three states
- A consistent pay experience regardless of concept, location, or shift
Why It Works
Three things that make the RHG setup hold up across five concepts and three states.
Each Concept Keeps Its Own Playbook
No two RHG concepts run the same way, and PayDay Portal does not ask them to. Tip pools, tip-outs, and service-charge distributions are configured at the concept and location level, and every new opening stands up on the same engine without a rebuild.
Compliance Travels With the Group
New York and Louisiana rules are handled in the background today, and the same infrastructure is what North Carolina will run on when flora opens in Charlotte. Compliance is not something operators rebuild every time RHG enters a new state.
One Platform, Every Employee, Every Language
Shift-to-shift workflows, weekly payouts through payroll, and a bilingual mobile app work together as one experience. Every employee, across five concepts and three states, in English or Spanish, has full visibility into what they earned and when it lands.
Want the full playbook behind this setup? Read How to Run Custom Tip Policies Across Multiple Restaurant Concepts and States.
