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Restaurants across B.C. that use a company to manage tip collection and staff wages say it has, without stating why, stopped distributing money and some restaurants are reporting that they are out thousands of dollars.
Everyday Payments is described as “delivering real-time employee payouts. Businesses using the service span hospitality, food service, beauty, wellness, and commission-based industries.
“Leveraging the AnyDay platform, the solution combines a powerful employer portal with a flexible mobile app and payment card for cardholders; simplifying fund management, improving visibility and control, and enabling faster, more predictable access to earnings.”
Eric Griffith, owner of Alta Bistro and Alpha Cafe in Whistler, told Global News that when he logged in to the system last Wednesday morning, he knew something was wrong.
“We’re missing $4,550,” he said.
“But I thought, ‘OK, this has to just be an error. They’ll resolve it. They must know that this has happened.’ Well, the emails go out, try to contact support, whatever, and it was just no response until the weekend.”
Griffith said business owners started realizing they were not alone.
“Monday, there was a press release from the company, which is what they emailed us as well, saying there’s some type of compliance issue. We’re working through it, and there’s a reconciliation, but no answers to any questions as to why this happened,” he said.
“What is the intention? When is the money coming back?”
Griffith said they started using the program as it saves time and administrative work and keeps track of all the money and staff tips.
“So this piece of technology was very useful and working well, absolutely well,” he said.
“The staff were happy. I was happy because I was saving time, and also it was just easy.”
However, with so much uncertainty now, Griffith said he doesn’t know what to do.
“So if it’s 5,000 to me and it’s $100,000 to someone else, it’s still like relative impact, right, which is ultimately hurting the business, the ability for the owners and businesses to pay the staff, and then, I mean, for me, it comes down to paying my suppliers and other things, right?,” he added.
“That money becomes a hole, right? So, yeah, I don’t want to think.”
Matthew Upton, one of the owners of The Broken Seal restaurant in Squamish, told Global News they are missing $12,000.
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“It’s huge,” he said.
“That’s over two weeks’ worth of payroll. It’s half of what our ends is. It’s a huge effect for us.”
Upton said the last week has been very challenging, trying to get in touch with someone at Everyday Payments. He said he was on hold for four hours on Friday, four hours on Saturday and four hours on Sunday and never got a response from anyone until Monday.
“It’s very concerning,” he said.
“It’s, I think, as a whole, the hospitality industry is not an easy industry to be in, and when there’s unknowns, we have such small margins, so keeping as much money in our bank account is the most important thing. So when you have large amounts come out, it’s definitely daunting, for sure.”
Ian Tostenson, president and CEO of the BC Restaurant & Foodservices Association, said he has heard the same issues from restaurants all over the province.
“I have just read two emails in the last five minutes,” he told Global News.
“One restaurant group lost $50,000, one restaurant group is out $15,000 — one’s in Prince George, one’s in Vancouver.”
Tostenson said in the case of one Vancouver restaurant, close to one million dollars was taken out of the “wallet” that Everyday Payments manages on behalf of employees to distribute tips.
“This is really, really serious, and there’s a lot of concern in the industry, because these funds go into a third party for the purposes of paying out and distribute the gratuities to our hard-working employees,” he added.
“And they’ve the company that manages that, Everyday Payments, for some reason that we don’t know, have taken the money and emptied all the wallets. I think this is in the millions of dollars, to be perfectly honest with you. This is really serious.”
Global News has reached out to Everyday Payments.
Initially, a form message was received, stating, “As you can imagine, Everyday People are inundated. Note that card creation and loading are temporarily paused while they work with DC Bank to resolve a service interruption affecting new card loads.
“Existing cardholders are not impacted and can continue using their cards as normal, but additional loads cannot be processed at this time.”
Later, a spokesperson for the company said in an email that they are aware of the concerns and they understand why the timing has been stressful for some restaurants.
“We are reviewing inquiries relating to a short transition period at the end of January, during which operational adjustments were implemented to move the platform to a fully prefunded processing model,” the statement read.
“During this period, some merchants experienced delays or changes in the timing of debits and loads.
“Importantly, funds were not removed from merchant accounts or cardholder wallets other than through established funding and settlement processes.”
Tostenson said the issue began after the company merged with another, and each appears to be pointing the finger at the other.
” Anybody is trying to reach out to the companies, all they’re doing is getting standard administrative messages back,” he said.
“And in the meantime, we’re scrambling to make sure that our employees are whole, so we’re having to find the money that’s gone to make sure we pay our employees. I’ve never seen anything like this.”
Tostenson said the guidance from the industry now is for businesses to check their wallets online and see what money is in there.
He also confirmed that police reports have been filed in Whistler and Prince George, but no one has heard from the company.
“The question that everybody wants to know is, where is my money?” Tostenson said.
