Owner of 5 California Wingstop locations owes $3 million, accused of underpaying 550 workers

California’s top wage theft watchdog has cited five restaurants and their owner for allegedly cheating more than 550 workers out of the state minimum wage and overtime, as well as premiums for missed meal breaks.

Clinton Lewis, who owns five Kern County franchise locations of the national chain Wingstop, owes nearly $3.2 million for wage theft violations.

The California Labor Commissioner’s Office, within the Department of Industrial Relations, opened the investigation into Lewis and his restaurants in November 2020 after receiving a labor law violation report for one of the locations, the office said Thursday.

Investigators found that between 2019 and 2022, Lewis operated each Wingstop location as a separate corporate entity, which made it look like each restaurant was a different employer. This meant Lewis could get away with paying employees a lower minimum wage that applied, at the time, to employers with fewer than 25 employees. (As of Jan. 1, 2023, all California employers regardless of size must pay a $15.50 minimum wage, and the amount will rise to $16 starting next year.)

Employees who were scheduled to work at more than one of Lewis’s restaurants in a single day were denied overtime pay, even if they clocked in more than eight hours in a workday or 40 hours in a workweek, investigators found. Lewis also failed to compensate employees for missed meal break premiums when they were scheduled to work at more than one location.

Citations were given to Hot Wing Holdings Group, Inc.; the Northwest Bakersfield Wing Company Inc.; the East Bakersfield Wing Company Inc.; the Bakersfield Wing Company, Inc. and the Southeast Bakersfield Wing Company Inc. Lewis was also personally cited.

Lewis and his corporate entities owe workers $190,741 in minimum wage violations, $4,323 for contract wages, $57,312 for overtime, $87,656 for meal premiums, $238,569 for liquidated damages and $1,307,980 for waiting time penalties. The citations also include interest on those penalties totaling $77,124, all of which are payable to a total of 551 employees.

Lewis and his restaurants also owe civil penalties totaling $1,197,900.

“This case highlights abuses that take place in low-wage industries such as franchised fast-food restaurants where separate corporate entities are created by the same employer to improperly lower labor costs,” said Labor Commissioner Lilia García-Brower in a statement. “The law is clear that such corporate schemes undercut law-abiding employers and circumvent worker protections.”

The news of the violations came on the same day that Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law that will raise the fast food minimum wage to $20 an hour starting next April. The law also creates a fast food council that will oversee wages and working conditions for the entire industry across the state.

The new law, previously known as Assembly Bill 1228, represents a compromise made between union-supported fast-food workers and the restaurant industry, who were previously set to face off on a ballot referendum that was estimated to cost millions of dollars on both sides.

The fast-food workers originally pushed for a bill that would make franchise corporations, such as Wingstop, jointly liable for violations committed by their franchisees. In exchange for dropping the bill, the restaurant industry agreed to the $20 minimum wage and also to dropping a referendum against a previously signed law that would create the fast food council.