The French Laundry, the three-Michelin-starred restaurant helmed by renown chef Thomas Keller, has been sued by a former employee who alleges wage theft and other labor law violations at the Yountville, Calif., eatery.
The suit, brought by Elena Flores Beteta, a dishwasher at the restaurant for three years beginning in 2022, alleges that the French Laundry Restaurant Corporation and the Thomas Keller Restaurant Group violated labor laws by failing to pay minimum wage or overtime hours, as well as neglecting to provide mandated rest breaks or access to proper resting facilities or break rooms.
“Plaintiff was required to work off the clock, work through meal and rest periods without compensation, received pay stubs that failed to accurately reflect her hours and premium wages, and was not paid final wages upon separation,” the complaint said.
Beteta’s suit, brought by a private attorney and filed last week in Napa County Superior Court, seeks more than $35,000 in damages, civil penalties and attorney fees.
The Thomas Keller Restaurant Group said in an emailed statement that it wasn’t aware of the lawsuit until the Press Democrat reported on it. A spokesperson for the restaurant said that the allegations in the suit are the first such claims to be made in the restaurant’s 48-year history, that they are “based on inaccurate, baseless information” and that the suit is a “frivolous, attention seeking filing.”
“Beyond this one employee, no other employee at the French Laundry has raised any issues about underpayment. The fact is that the French Laundry complies fully with all California employment laws. We look forward to proving that this lawsuit from a single employee has no basis whatsoever,” the restaurant group said.
The suit describes supervisors allegedly sending Beteta and her coworkers back to their workstations three to four times per week to finish cleaning after they had already clocked out for the day. This additional cleaning of walls, mopping of floors, and removing accumulated food waste from the dishwasher, the lawsuit said, typically took five to 10 minutes and workers were not allowed to clock back in to record the unpaid time.
The suit alleged meal breaks were “frequently interrupted” when Beteta would be called back by a supervisor to clean buckets or dispose of trash.
The suit was filed as a representative action on behalf of Beteta as well as an estimated 50 potential current and former employees through a unique California law called the Private Attorneys General Act, or PAGA, which grants workers the ability to sue employers on behalf of themselves, other employees and the state of California over workplace violations.
PAGA claims don’t require the same type of notification and certification of workers allegedly affected that a typical class-action suit would require.
The law was reformed in 2024 through a legislative deal after a pressure campaign by business groups who said the law was being exploited for cash grabs by predatory attorneys. The reforms made it more difficult to simply demand a hefty payout from a company. If companies can show they are trying to correct a violation, by giving back pay to workers and agreeing to change the offending practices, the law keeps penalties low.
Workers represented by private attorneys are limited to seeking penalties only for labor code violations they personally experienced. Nonprofit legal organizations have more leeway to pursue penalties for other allegations employees experienced, even if the individual worker named in the lawsuit did not personally experience all of them.
