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When Sydnie Rangel started last June as a bartender at Valentina's Tex Mex BBQ, she was brimming with optimism. Not only was the 6,000-square-foot Buda restaurant packed with customers immediately after its opening, but husband-and-wife owners Miguel and Modesty Vidal were full of ideas to bring the longtime food truck to its full potential in the bright and homey space.
But that optimism swiftly waned. Rangel was promoted to bar manager, where she got an inside look at how the business was being run. She discovered that her and her staff members' checks were coming in late, an issue the Vidals initially blamed on changing banks. But then the checks started bouncing.
By October, one of her bar-backs informed her he could no longer work without payment because he needed the money to take care of his sick father. Other employees pledged to stand with him, including Rangel. None of them showed up to work the next morning — and all were fired, she said.
"If (Miguel and Modesty) care about us so much, like they said that they did, they would understand this is a problem, this is an issue that needs to be fixed immediately," Rangel said.
It also is part of a pattern of alleged workplace malfeasance that dates back to when the restaurant operated out of a food trailer in South Austin, detailed by former employees of Valentina's or their parents in interviews with the Austin Business Journal, as well as by others who have spoken to various news outlets or voiced concerns on social media. The issues include a history of late, sporadic or nonexistent payments, and tips or payments being made in cash or through digital payment networks instead of checks. They also described a demanding workplace culture centered around a staff primarily made up of teenagers.
The outpouring comes in the wake of an ABJ investigation that revealed a host of issues with the Vidals' fiscal and business management. The company's debt is said to be at least $2.3 million and includes at least $1.5 million owed to its senior creditor, $92,000 in missed rent payments, more than $47,000 owed to the state of Texas in unpaid taxes, more than $20,000 owed to at least one contractor and $285,000 in loans from the city of Buda, which helped the Vidals open their restaurant. It's a staggering amount for a restaurant that had lines out the door and was said to be on track for $3 million in revenue this year — although that figure is down from $4.5 million at the food truck and less than projections of $10 million at the restaurant.
The ABJ's reporting also revealed a Department of Labor investigation into the company's practices, and employees corroborated that investigators visited the restaurant last year. That was around the time the business faced allegations of tip stealing, and the Texas Workforce Commission confirmed it has received at least one wage claim that it is examining. The potential ramifications for the business remain to be seen.
For now, Valentina's doors remain locked for breaching its lease and not paying rent, and employees' paychecks have bounced, officials have said. The restaurant is closed until at least May 8, while Austin-based InKind, which is the business' senior secured creditor, essentially takes over the business.
InKind CEO Johann Moonesinghe previously said that, because his company isn't the restaurant's owners or operators, it was unaware of "the significant issues with payroll that have been going on." He said InKind was informed two weeks prior by the Vidals that they would be closing because it was not financially viable for them to operate the business — even though it often had lines out the door, it had access to public subsidies and earned rave reviews by the likes of Texas Monthly.
While InKind is not necessarily liable for the wages that are owed, he said it's working with the Vidals to make sure everyone gets paid. InKind also aims to get a proper business management team in place so employees can keep their jobs and "the community can continue to eat the best barbecue in the country," Moonesinghe previously said.
The Vidals have not responded to multiple requests for comment, including for this story. But they did acknowledge issues when they announced the closure in an April 25 social media post.
"We’ve been at this for a long time, and we work really hard, but this last year has been harder than ever," the Vidals said in the post. "For us, scaling our business from 600 sq. ft. to 6,000 sq. ft. has proven more than we can manage, and we recognize and admit to the many issues and challenges Valentina’s has had since we’ve moved. We can no longer continue to give our loyal customers sub par customer service and food."
Employee culture
Employees reached by the ABJ all shared a similar narrative. While their experiences were encouraging at first, there were issues with payments from the start. They brushed it off amid explanations from the Vidals before the problems worsened and extended to issues getting supplies for the restaurant.
Rangel said employees were paid sporadically and in an unorganized manner. She said when she would confront Modesty Vidal about missing payments for her or her employees, she would sometimes get paid via Venmo. That came as the company brought in revenue of about $300,000 to $400,000 a month, she said, but employees and vendors still had to squeeze funds out of the Vidals.
"It always seemed like a priority to get paid, but we just grew so exhausted of it," Rangel said.
Another former bartender, who asked to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation, said that when employees tried to deposit their checks, they would bounce. Eventually, they decided to go straight to the source and withdraw their checks through the business’ bank, Chase Bank. Because she did not have an account with that bank, however, she said she had to pay $10 for every transaction.
Another former employee said some workers were paid with handwritten checks.
“The Chase employees started to know who we were — we would walk in and they would just shake their head at us. We were regulars at the bank, and they started apologizing,” Rangel said. “It would be whoever got to the bank first would get whatever was in the account. So maybe a handful — maybe — would be able to get paid.”
The bartenders were adults, but the Vidals mainly hired high school students to work in the kitchen and around the restaurant. The former bartender believes the Vidals were taking advantage of the young and inexperienced who were too afraid to speak up.
“When I look back at it now, I kind of have a better understanding of why they hired the kids, because the kids just kind of took it and they wouldn't speak up," she said. "And I feel like some of them probably didn't even tell their parents."
Another former employee who asked to remain anonymous said the business would run out of meat by 9 a.m. or 10 a.m. Though it's normal for barbecue restaurants to run low on inventory, it typically doesn't happen in the morning.
Due to the consistently low inventory, workers had to run to H-E-B routinely to grab supplies to supplement missing orders, with the Vidals handing them cash for the purchases, the former bartender said.
Two other former employees, Wyatt Bailey and Ethan Walker, told Fox 7 Austin that they're owed more than $1,000 between the two of them — and that they're aware of at least 20 other employees are owed money. Walker said he's owed at least $800 of that, adding that as a teenager it's a lot of money. Bailey said he needs the money to help out his family and pay off his truck.
Miguel Vidal "said he was going to try to get our paychecks out as quickly as possible, and I’ve been texting him multiple times saying I need it, and he’s like I can’t do it, I can’t get it out to you," Walker said.
Longstanding issues
Parents of employees detailed workplace issues that appear to extend back to when the Vidals operated their business out of a food trailer on Menchaca Road in South Austin.
Christina, who declined to provide her last name out of fear of retaliation, said in 2021 she sat in on a phone orientation with her son, Sebastian, after he was hired to work at the food trailer as a 17-year-old. During the call, Modesty Vidal informed him he would receive an envelope with his cash tips. That never happened during a six-month stint he worked at the restaurant, moving his way up from running food out to customers, taking orders and eventually helping with food prep.
"Never — not one single time — did that ever happen," Christina said. "Most of the time he was there, he was taking out the orders and taking the orders, so he had a lot of hand-to-hand cash transactions that were going into tips. Never did he get it."
That was only a piece of the working conditions that Sebastian endured, she alleges. He also worked up to 12 hours without lunch or bathroom breaks, was forced to clock out and continue working, and toiled in trailers that sometimes reached more than 120 degrees without air conditioning. She added that he lost weight while working at the restaurant. His paychecks dropped initially from more than $1,000 for a full week of work to a little more than $200, she said.
"He (Miguel Vidal) would belittle them so much. Nothing they ever did was good enough. Those kids worked tooth and nail for him," she said.
At least initially, she would pick up and drop her son off at work. She said she would sometimes bring Slurpees to Sebastian and a friend who also worked there because they were so thirsty. She remembered one occasion when she picked up Sebastian and he was gagging because he had nothing in his stomach.
"He said, 'Mama, I have like no saliva in my mouth. I feel like I'm going to pass out,'" she said. "I'm like, 'It's time to go. Tell him it's time to go.'"
Christina said she urged her son to quit, but he wanted to tough it out. While many employees were scared to stand up to Miguel, Sebastian once tried to put in his two-weeks notice but was assured by Miguel that the working conditions would improve, she said. The breaking point for Sebastian came when Miguel forced the staff to stay late one day and clean the entire trailer without lunch, and then afterward informed them they would receive only $40 instead of their full paychecks, Christina said.
It prompted Sebastian and a friend to confront Miguel about their paychecks, and he cussed them out "from top to bottom" and then fired them, she said. It's a day that Christina said she'll never forget because Sebastian was too shaken to drive home, while his friend had to have his sister pick him up.
The last payment for that 40-hour week arrived in October 2021 and totaled $109.81 in his direct-deposit account. She spoke to a lawyer about potential remedies but was told she needed a group of employees to join her son and his friend. Others were too scared to speak up, she said.
Her son eventually found another job and is attending school. But she said her frustrations still linger.
"I was to the point where I wanted to stand in front of his establishment with a sign that said, 'Stop eating here because he keeps these kids' money,'" Christina said. "I've worked with many people and never have I seen someone treat their employees that way. ... I feel like he owes these kids an apology. Anybody who worked for him, he owes them an apology."
Many other employees or their family members have taken to social media or the comments section of news articles to share similar experiences — or have talked about them with local television stations.
One parent of an employee told KXAN News that her son has had several hundreds of dollars worth of checks bounce. He's missing several others. She said sometimes payments came partly from the digital payment network Zelle and partly in cash.
She expressed concern that the change to new management won't mean her son will get his money, saying he's an "extremely hard worker" and "it hurts me as a mom to see him not getting compensated for that."
“Are the current owners still responsible for paying that back wages that he’s owed? Do the new owners assume that debt? Those are questions I don’t know,” she said.
What ramifications could they face
The potential ramifications for the Vidals remain to be seen, pending the outcome of investigations by the U.S. Department of Labor and the Texas Workforce Commission. Abut encouraged anyone with information of potential illegal activity of any business to report it to the IRS.
Still, Valentina's appears to be in hot water because of its tip policy. The restaurant's tip practices first came under fire publicly last year when anonymous accusations emerged on Reddit accusing the owners of stealing tips, with screenshots of a tip policy stating a number of factors that would result in tips being withheld from employees. For instance, the post said being on time meant getting to work 5 to 10 minutes early.
The Vidals responded to the post on Facebook and shared an updated tip policy. "We can only continue to learn, adapt, and try do better as we grow," the post said last July.
At the crux of the issue is that employers, including managers and supervisors, may not keep tips, according to the Department of Labor. The Fair Labor Standards Act prohibits employees from keeping any portion of tips for any reason, "whether directly or through a tip pool," and employers may not require employees to give their tips to an employer, supervisor or manager.
The Texas Workforce Commission confirmed on April 30 that it has received one wage claim for wages earned at the business and is currently processing it.
The U.S. Department of Labor confirmed on April 26 it was investigating the company, although officials would not confirm for what.
"Because all complaints are anonymous to protect those who file complaints, we do not disclose how an investigation was initiated. However, we can confirm our Wage and Hour Division has an open and ongoing investigation into this employer. At this time that is all we can say on the case," said Juan Rodríguez, deputy regional director of the labor department's office of public affairs, in a statement.
Jason Boulette, a partner and labor and employment lawyer at Austin-based Boulette Golden & Marin LLP, said tips are "the property of the employees and the employer cannot retain any portion of it." That only pertains to transactions made directly between the customer and the person receiving a tip, however, and doesn't include transactions like a service charge.
If the business is found to have violated the law, it would be required to pay unpaid wages to its staff, he said. That would also likely include additional amounts as an incentive that would be diverted to the employees whose wages were withheld.
"The goal is to ensure people are paid for their labor. In the simplest terms, that's the ultimate goal in remedy," Boulette said.
He said that employees who are concerned they are not paid properly should first say something to their employers. While there are bad actors who violate the law, he said, some employers don't fully know or understand the law, especially in the wake of some laws changing in the last few years. If that still doesn't lead to following the law, that's when it's time for lawyers or the Department of Labor to get involved.
"We'd rather not have to resort to audits and enforcement action and litigation. We would much rather our clients get it right the first time. It's in everyone' best interest," Boulette said.
