Former employees of Gringos Locos, the popular Orlando Tex-mex restaurant chain that abruptly closed earlier this month, allege their former boss has failed to pay them their full final paychecks, claiming he doesn’t have the money to do so.
Employees say they were given no advance notice of the restaurant closures, and they have no idea when, or if, they will be paid. They remain uncertain despite a vague commitment made by their former employer to “get everyone paid.”
“After paying out 100% of tips/gratuities, despite my best efforts, the companies only had enough funds to pay 25% of wages from week ending 8/1/2026,” Gringos Locos co-owner Phillip O’Biso wrote in an email to former employees, obtained by Orlando Weekly. “I will reiterate that I intend to get everyone paid for every hour worked as soon as possible, however that will not be possible today.”
No update from O’Biso has been provided in the weeks since, according to one former employee. The abrupt loss of their jobs, however, has left some of O’Biso’s employees in dire straits.
One employee of 10 years — who asked Orlando Weekly to remain anonymous because he’s searching for a new job — lives at an extended stay hotel near the former Gringos Locos location on Robinson Street where he worked.
Without a full paycheck to his name, however, after being unceremoniously let go from his job of a decade, the worker admitted to the Weekly that he’s not sure he won’t be living on the streets in the coming days if he can’t find a way to pay for his room.
“My rent is due weekly,” he explained. “I might end up with no place to live.”
‘There was no heads up’
Five former employees of the Milk District location told Orlando Weekly they received no advance notice of the owner’s decision to abruptly close all four Gringos Locos locations, including the original spot downtown, after 17 years in business.
But Madisin Taylor, a former supervisor, said that chronic health and safety hazards, unpaid bills to vendors, O’Biso’s legal disputes with current and former co-owners, and wage theft allegations make the closure less of a surprise and more of a stab in the back.
Orlando Weekly reached out to O’Biso for comment for this story, but did not hear back ahead of publication.
“I think we kind of had a suspicion. We knew it was going downhill, but it’s also been going downhill for so many years, and there was just no heads up,” said Taylor, who began working at the Robinson Street location in 2018.
She actually left her job at Gringos Locos in November, ahead of its closure, feeling the weight of issues at work that were continually left unresolved.
“It got to the point where it was affecting my mental health greatly,” she said. “I was like, ‘I’m not staying and waiting for my paycheck not to hit.’”
She and others allege that workers repeatedly faced paycheck issues. The longtime employee we spoke to who asked to remain anonymous said, for months, Gringos was allegedly taking money out of his paychecks without his consent.
“They took about $400 from me out of my checks over, I think, six months for insurance that I didn’t even have,” he said. “And when I myself, Maddie, and a couple of other managers and general managers contacted them, [they said] ‘Oh, we’re looking into it.’ And I never got my money back.”
Other alleged issues, like broken, malfunctioning, or dripping AC; a lack of ventilation in the kitchen area; mold; and other structural issues also made life at work difficult — especially during Florida’s hot summer months.
“They were really bad towards the end of it, though,” added Jenna Bertran, another former Gringos employee at the Milk District location. “Even the customers were complaining about it.”
Under the federal Occupational Safety and Health Act, U.S. employers are required to keep workplaces “free from recognized hazards that are causing or are likely to cause death or serious physical harm to his employees.” That includes dangers posed by extreme heat.
“We had no ventilation in that building, so like, our eyes would burn all day long from the butter,” said Taylor. At her location, she said there were no hoods to ventilate the “smoky” steam and odors that emanated from the cooking food.
So, why’d they stay?
Taylor, and others, said they stayed at Gringo’s through the trials and tribulations largely for each other.
“That place made family like no other,” she said, adding that in the beginning, the pay was good compared to other places around town. “We suffered together, we succeeded together … We made the best of what we had,” she said.
The anonymous longtime employee added that Gringos used to feel like a better place to work. Things changed during the COVID-19 pandemic, he explained, with changes made at the top by company leadership. “I stayed there hoping that things would get better, because it wasn’t always like that,” he said.
Gringos Locos, notably, grabbed headlines nearly a decade ago — not for its award-winning tacos or loyal employees, but for a lawsuit filed by a founder of the restaurant chain who alleged he’d been pushed out of the company.
As the Orlando Sentinel reported at the time, Gringos co-founder Robert Bair sued O’Biso and fellow business partners Jeremy Clark and Angela Clark in 2017, alleging they had “wrongfully exclude[d]” Bair from his “rightful ownership interest” and unlawfully hid profits from him.
Bair’s lawsuit — still ongoing – acknowledges that his relationship with his business partners at Gringos reportedly “broke down” in the summer and early fall of 2016. He later started his own venture, local taqueria Tin & Taco.
Gringos’ lawyer, at the time, dismissed Bair’s allegations against the Clarks and O’Biso, describing the suit as “legal extortion.”
“[Bair is] trying to defame people’s reputation to compel them to give him compensation,” Gringos lawyer Luis Gonzalez told the Sentinel.
Former employees told the Weekly this tension up top spilled out into the workplace, as conditions and treatment of employees allegedly continued to deteriorate.
“The thing is, if you treat your employees right, they would have stuck with you ‘til the end,” said Taylor. “But because you didn’t, you had to be sleazy and hide that you were shutting down until the day before.”
‘We have each others’ backs’
The internal issues at one of Orlando’s most popular late-night Tex-Mex chains only grew in the years after the owners’ split with Bair.
In 2023, O’Biso was hit with another lawsuit — this time, filed by the Clarks themselves.
The lawsuit, still pending in the Ninth Judicial Circuit Court of Florida, alleges O’Biso engaged in embezzlement, lied under oath in the Bair litigation to “protect his claimed ownership interest,” unilaterally changed restaurant menu prices and made other management decisions without consulting the Clarks, falsified accounting records and created a “hostile work environment” for Gringos employees.
“[O’Biso] has violated his duty of loyalty and duty of care by engaging in reckless and intentional conduct to purposefully harm the company,” the lawsuit reads. “He has also violated his obligations of good faith and fair dealing by engaging in such conduct.”
As for the former employees, Taylor said they all started a group chat — across the four former Gringos locations — to share job opportunities, provide any updates on communications with their former employer, and consider other legal options they can take if they aren’t paid as promised.
Former Gov. Jeb Bush dismantled Florida’s state labor department more than 20 years ago, leaving Florida with few and flawed options to recover wages they’re lawfully owed. Still, workers in Florida who believe they’ve been underpaid do have the option of filing a complaint with the U.S. Department of Labor — a federal agency facing budget cuts under the Trump administration and record-low staffing levels.
“Most of the group have found other jobs,” said the anonymous longtime Gringos employee. “Some of us, it’s a little bit harder to find jobs. I’ve been looking.”
Taylor said she decided to speak to the media because she’s worried that O’Biso will try to reopen Gringos, or open a new venture in the Orlando area. She wants the public to know who they’ll be working with, if he does.
“We’ve been, you know, suffering in silence for all of these years, and again, I just don’t want to see this happen to anybody else,” she said. “If he does reopen … I don’t want to see anybody else go through the things that we went through.”
In the meantime, she said, “We have each others’ backs.”
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