The Cake Bake Shop, a dessert-forward restaurant at Disney World’s Boardwalk Resort, is facing multiple lawsuits from former servers and bartenders who accuse the restaurant of violating minimum wage law.
The workers, all formerly paid as tipped employees, allege that they were paid a subminimum tipped wage in 2024 and 2025 for an “excessive amount” of non-tipped work, including janitorial and maintenance activities, according to Orange County Court records.
The latest suit against the Cake Bake Shop, owned by Gwendolyn Rogers, was filed by former server Alexandria Pope on April 30, 2026. Pope is seeking about $4,805, exclusive of interest, including $2,402 in unpaid wages and $2,402 in liquidated damages.
Understanding the law
In Florida, the state minimum wage is currently $14 an hour, or $10.98 for employees who earn tips. A “tipped employee” is defined as any employee who is regularly paid at least $30 monthly in tips.
This commonly includes jobs in the hospitality industry, such as bartenders and servers, although the tipping system itself is rooted in a racist history that was adopted as a way for U.S. employers to pay formerly enslaved workers less. Today, it leaves workers of all races and ethnicities more vulnerable to wage theft and exploitation, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
According to Orlando attorney Michael Grossman, whose law firm is representing the former employees of Cake Bake Shop, U.S. employers are permitted to direct lower-paid tipped workers to do “side work” that isn’t directly generating customer tips — so long as that work isn’t making up more than an “occasional” part of their workweek.
“Our clients were required to perform non-tipped labor for more than an ‘occasional’ amount of time, which is the language that the federal law uses,” Grossman explained to Orlando Weekly.
He’s referring to a decades-old general rule of thumb — formerly eyed for elimination by President Donald Trump — that allows related “side work” to comprise up to 20 percent of a tipped worker’s duties. This is known as the 80/20 rule.
According to the complaints against Cake Bake Shop, a third-party restaurant operated on Disney World property, servers were required to perform “excessive amounts” of side work “every shift, often for hours at a time.” Such tasks included stocking food and beverage items, cleaning and wiping tables, mopping, sweeping, polishing silverware and washing dishes.
“Rather than being ‘occasional,’ the side work that Plaintiff was required to undertake occupied substantial discrete and insular periods of the Plaintiff’s workday,” one of the lawsuits reads. “Plaintiff was required to work for substantial periods of time before Plaintiff’s tip-producing shift began. Plaintiff was additionally required to work for substantial periods of time after Plaintiff’s shift concluded.”
At least 11 individual lawsuits have been filed by former Cake Bake Shop employees alleging minimum wage violations since July 2025, court records show. All but four of the most recent lawsuits filed have ended in settlements, before heading to trial.
“The whole point of going to trial is so that our clients can be made whole for the damages that they’ve incurred,” Grossman explained, when questioned about the settlements. “Those damages can be made whole to their satisfaction without the time and expense and risk of a trial,” he added, stating that “oftentimes” a settlement “is the preferred solution.”
Rogers, the owner of the Cake Bake Shop and a defendant in the lawsuit, could not immediately be reached for comment. Her attorneys did not respond to an emailed request for comment either.
In defense of Rogers, her attorneys have argued in court documents, “Defendant’s pay practices were adopted in good faith, and in conformity with, and reliance on, written administrative regulations, orders, rulings, approvals, or interpretations of the United States Department of Labor.”
Know your rights
The Cake Bake Shop, a full table-service food and dessert restaurant founded in Indiana before leasing property in Florida, first opened at Disney World’s Boardwalk Resort in 2024. Since then, the posh restaurant and bakery has garnered a mixed reputation online for its high-priced dessert options, including $22 “signature” cake slices, $17 ice cream sundaes, and slices of pie priced from $14 to $17.
Grossman, a former bartender and server himself, pointed out that hospitality workers can be more vulnerable to wage theft, a term that broadly refers to being underpaid, either in the form of wages or earned job benefits.
“They’re often living paycheck to paycheck … working for wages far below the average American,” he said of the hospitality workforce. “It’s really, really important that workers in this kind of position are aware of what their minimum wage rights are to make sure that they’re not being taken advantage of or abused.”
“It’s really, really important that workers in this kind of position are aware of what their minimum wage rights are.”
Orlando attorney Michael Grossman
Under the Florida Minimum Wage Act, a state law modeled after the federal Fair Labor Standards Act and enshrined in the Florida Constitution, employers can legally pay workers less than the standard minimum wage, if they qualify as tipped employees.
Employers, in this case, can apply what’s known as a “tip credit” for tipped workers. A tip credit — equal to $3.02 in Florida — is equal to the difference between the state minimum wage for nontipped workers and the base wage for workers who are tipped.
The lawsuits allege that the Cake Bake Shop either “misapplied a tip credit to Plaintiff’s wage, or failed to pay Plaintiff minimum wage for all hours worked,” based on the types of work they performed or other deductions made to paychecks that ultimately left them with subminimum wage earnings.
Some former employees, for instance, have alleged in their suits that the Cake Bake Shop “applied improper wage deductions” to their paychecks to pay for “uniform cleaning” and “required footwear,” resulting in workers being paid less than minimum wage for the workweek. These workers, according to Grossman, were required to get into uniform ahead of their scheduled shifts but not at home, which could take a “considerable amount of time.”
“This was done off the clock when they weren’t allowed a wage for this amount of time,” Grossman explained. The lawsuits also allege that servers were basically forced to work “dual” jobs, by being directed to perform janitorial and maintenance duties unrelated to their server jobs, while still being paid a tipped wage.
“For such tasks, since they’re not really belonging to the occupation of the server, you know, the law would require minimum wage to be paid for any time spent doing them,” Grossman explained.
Under the FLSA, employers can only apply a tip credit to a tipped server’s paycheck – thereby paying them less than the standard minimum wage — if the non-tip-producing activities they perform, such as spending “part of their time” cleaning tables, are directly related to their job as a server.
“Defendants have and continue to willfully violate the Florida Minimum Wage Act by not paying Plaintiff a wage equal to or greater than minimum wage for time spent performing ‘dual occupational’ tasks,” a lawsuit against the Cake Bake Shop alleges.
An unsteady landscape
Granted, U.S. employers have been forced to navigate a shifting policy landscape on when they legally can and cannot pay someone a subminimum wage.
The U.S. Department of Labor, at the direction of officials appointed by the U.S. President, has proposed changes to rules over the last couple of decades that apply to tipped work, including changes to the decades-old 80/20 guidance and the “dual jobs” rule.
Under President Donald Trump’s first term in the White House, from 2016 to 2020, the labor department sought to eliminate the 80/20 guidance altogether — a move characterized by labor advocates as one that would benefit employers at the expense of their employees.
“With no meaningful limit on the amount of time tipped workers may perform nontipped work, employers could capture more of workers’ tips,” wrote Nina Mast, an analyst for the Economic Policy Institute, in an explanation of the proposal. “It is not hard to imagine how employers of tipped workers might exploit this change in the regulation.”
Under the Biden administration, after Trump’s first term, the DOL sought to enshrine the 80/20 guidance as a federal regulation, in order to enhance tipped workers’ rights. Biden’s DOL also sought to adopt a 30-minute limit on the amount of time that tipped workers could spend on duties that don’t generate tips — a rule that business groups saw unduly burdensome.
That rule, finalized in 2021, was quickly challenged in court by the Texas Restaurant Association and Restaurant Law Center, and was vacated (i.e. tossed) by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in 2024.
Attorney Grossman told the Weekly, however, that “every court, to my knowledge, outside of the Fifth Circuit has reaffirmed the 80/20 rule, because the 80/20 rule preceded the 2024 regulation by decades.”
Limited options
In Florida, unlike most other states, there is no state labor department dedicated to enforcing workers’ wage rights, leaving Florida workers with limited options for assistance if they believe their employer has violated their right to minimum wage. That’s been the case, at least, since former Republican Gov. Jeb Bush abolished Florida’s state labor department more than 20 years ago.
Although some Florida Democratic lawmakers have sought to re-establish the department, or even just create a labor division in the state government, Republicans who make up a supermajority of the Florida Legislature have ignored their attempts.
Florida’s Attorney General is the only state official authorized to enforce Florida’s state minimum wage, which at $14 is nearly double the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. As Orlando Weekly has previously reported, however, there’s little evidence the AG’s office has used its enforcement authority to recoup lost wages for workers from employers that violate Florida’s minimum wage requirements.
This loose enforcement by the state leaves most Florida workers with the option of asking the federal labor department for help — which can only enforce the federal minimum wage — or reaching out to a law firm that specializes in wage and hour issues, like Grossman Law. A half-dozen municipalities in Florida (not including Orange County or Orlando) have also established their own local departments to combat wage theft.
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