New York Minimum Wage for Restaurant and Tipped Workers

As of January 1, 2026, the New York minimum wage for restaurant workers is $17.00 per hour in New York City, Long Island, and Westchester County, and $16.00 per hour in the rest of the state.¹ Tipped servers, bartenders, and bussers can be paid a lower cash wage, but their tips must bring them up to those same totals. Beyond the hourly rate, New York’s Hospitality Industry Wage Order layers on rules for overtime, spread of hours, call-in pay, uniform maintenance, and tip handling that apply to almost everyone working in a restaurant.

The 2026 Rates for Non-Tipped Restaurant Staff

Cooks, dishwashers, hosts, prep staff, and other back-of-house workers who don’t customarily receive tips are entitled to the full minimum wage:

New York City (all employer sizes): $17.00 per hour
Long Island and Westchester County: $17.00 per hour
Remainder of New York State: $16.00 per hour

The old distinction between small and large New York City employers is gone. Both pay $17.00.²

Tipped Food Service Workers

Servers, bartenders, bussers, and captains are classified as “food service workers” under the Hospitality Wage Order. Their employers can pay a lower cash wage and claim the difference as a tip credit, provided cash wages plus tips reach the full minimum. For 2026:³

New York City, Long Island, and Westchester: $11.35 cash wage, up to a $5.65 tip credit, totaling at least $17.00.
Remainder of New York State: $10.70 cash wage, up to a $5.30 tip credit, totaling at least $16.00.

If tips fall short in any given workweek, the employer must make up the difference in cash. This is not optional. An employer who fails to cover the gap is committing a wage violation.³

Service Employees and Delivery Workers

A separate tipped category, “service employees,” covers workers who receive tips but aren’t primarily serving food or drink. In a restaurant, this usually means coat check staff. Their cash wage is higher and their tip credit smaller: $14.15 with a $2.85 credit downstate, and $13.30 with a $2.70 credit elsewhere.

Delivery workers are specifically excluded from the food service worker definition, so employers cannot apply the larger food service tip credit to them.⁴ Depending on the role, a delivery worker may fit the service employee category or may be owed the full minimum wage with no credit at all. Only hospitality employers can use any tip credit; employers outside the industry pay full minimum wage regardless of tips.¹

Fast Food Workers

Fast food workers used to have their own higher minimum, but that distinction ended in 2025. They now earn the same $17.00 or $16.00 as other non-tipped hospitality staff.⁵ One rule still sets fast food apart: employers cannot claim a tip credit at all.⁶

Overtime Pay

Non-exempt restaurant employees who work more than 40 hours in a workweek are entitled to overtime at 1.5 times their regular rate.⁷

For tipped workers, overtime must be calculated on the full minimum wage, not just the cash wage. A New York City food service worker on the $11.35 cash wage has a regular rate of $17.00. The overtime rate is $25.50 (1.5 × $17.00). The employer then subtracts the $5.65 tip credit, leaving a cash overtime payment of $19.85 per hour. Getting this wrong is one of the most common wage violations in the industry.

The Salary Threshold for Exempt Managers

A restaurant manager can be exempt from overtime as an executive or administrative employee, but only if they meet both a duties test and a minimum weekly salary. For 2026:

New York City, Nassau, Suffolk, and Westchester counties: $1,275.00 per week ($66,300 per year)
Remainder of New York State: $1,199.10 per week ($62,353.20 per year)

A manager paid less than those amounts is entitled to overtime no matter what their title says.⁸

Spread of Hours Pay

When more than 10 hours pass between the start and end of a restaurant worker’s day, the employer owes one extra hour of pay at the full minimum wage. The spread includes everything from first clock-in to last clock-out: working time, meal breaks, and any gap between split shifts all count.⁹

Split shifts are the usual trigger. Work an 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. lunch shift and come back for dinner from 5:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m., and your spread is 11 hours. You’re owed the extra hour. It applies to every restaurant and all-year hotel employee regardless of pay level, cannot be offset by meal or lodging credits, and does not count as hours worked for overtime.⁷

Call-In Pay

Report for a scheduled shift and get sent home early, or have the shift canceled after you show up, and your employer still owes you a minimum amount of pay:¹⁰

One shift: at least 3 hours of pay, or the full scheduled shift if shorter.
Two shifts totaling 6 hours or less: at least 6 hours of pay, or the full scheduled shift if shorter.
Three shifts totaling 8 hours or less: at least 8 hours of pay, or the full scheduled shift if shorter.

A “regularly scheduled shift” for this rule means a fixed, repeating shift on the same day each week. If your schedule shifts week to week, the straight-hour minimums above apply.

Tips, Tip Pools, and Service Charges

Under Labor Law Section 196-d, employers and managers cannot keep any portion of a tip left for an employee. Any charge on a customer’s bill beyond the price of food, drink, and similar items is presumed to be a tip and must go to the worker who provided the service.⁴

Tip sharing and tip pooling are both allowed. An employer can set the percentages, but the tips have to flow through the employees, and managers and supervisors cannot take a cut. Federal law is consistent: a manager can only keep tips from service they personally and solely provided, such as waiting on a table themselves.¹¹

A mandatory service charge, common on banquet or large-party bills, is not automatically a tip, but the employer has to earn that treatment. Customers must receive clear written notice that the charge is not a gratuity and will not be distributed to the servers. Without that notice, the charge is presumed to be a tip and belongs to the workers. The employer bears the burden of proof.⁴

Uniform Maintenance Pay

If your employer requires a uniform and doesn’t launder it for free, you’re entitled to additional weekly pay. For 2026 in New York City, Long Island, and Westchester: $21.10 for more than 30 hours per week, $16.75 for 20 to 30 hours, and $10.10 for fewer than 20 hours. In the rest of the state: $19.85, $15.80, and $9.55 respectively.

The pay cannot be offset by meal or lodging credits and applies regardless of your hourly rate.¹² Many workers never hear about this one. If your employer requires a specific shirt, apron, or outfit and you wash it at home, check your pay stubs.

Meal Breaks, Payday, and Illegal Deductions

New York Labor Law requires unpaid meal periods that vary with shift length and timing. A day shift of six or more hours spanning 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. gets a 30-minute lunch break in that window. Shifts starting between 1:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m. that run longer than six hours get a 45-minute break midway through. Shifts running from before 11:00 a.m. to after 7:00 p.m. get an additional 20-minute meal break between 5:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m.¹³

Most restaurant workers qualify as manual workers under New York law and must be paid weekly, no later than seven calendar days after the workweek ends. Clerical and administrative employees can be paid semi-monthly.¹⁴ Every paycheck must come with a wage statement showing hours worked, pay rate, gross wages, and all deductions, and for non-exempt employees it must list regular and overtime hours separately with each rate.¹⁵

Deductions from your wages are tightly limited. Employers can take out amounts required by law and amounts you’ve authorized in writing for your own benefit, such as health insurance premiums. Deductions for broken dishes, cash register shortages, customer walkouts, or the cost of uniforms are not permitted, and any language in an employment agreement claiming otherwise doesn’t change that.

1
Department of Labor. Your New York State Minimum Wage
2
New York State Government. New York State’s Minimum Wage
3
Department of Labor. Minimum Wage for Tipped Workers
4
Department of Labor. Tips and Gratuities Frequently Asked Questions
5
Department of Labor. Minimum Wage for Fast Food Workers Frequently Asked Questions
6
NY.Gov. Part 146 Hospitality Industry Wage Order
7
Department of Labor. Hospitality Wage Order Frequently Asked Questions
8
Department of Labor. Minimum Wage Frequently Asked Questions
9
Legal Information Institute (LII) / Cornell Law School. New York Comp Codes R and Regs Tit 12 146-1.6 – Spread of Hours Greater Than 10 in Restaurants and All-Year Hotels
10
LII / Legal Information Institute. New York Comp Codes R and Regs Tit 12 146-1.5 – Call-in Pay
11
U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division. Fact Sheet 15B – Managers and Supervisors Under the Fair Labor Standards Act and Tips
12
NY.Gov. Minimum Wage Poster Hospitality Industry (LS207.3)
13
Labor.ny.gov. Meal and Rest Periods Frequently Asked Questions
14
New York State Senate. New York Labor Law 191 – Frequency of Payments
15
NY.Gov. Guidelines for Wage Statement Provisions (LS45)