Brigantine Restaurants, a multi-concept group with 23 locations in California, faced growing challenges around manual tip handling and outdated processes. By partnering with TipHaus, they transformed their tip distribution system, dramatically reducing liability, improving transparency, and empowering their workforce with daily digital payouts.
75% Reduction
in on-site cash reserves, improving operational efficiency and minimizing theft risk.
25+ Hours
saved each day, by not providing manual tip-outs for staff
Standardized tip policies, that are same across all 23 concepts
California
23
Full-Service Seafood & Oyster Bar
David Tingle, Regional Manager
Brigantine’s cash-heavy tip distribution created inefficiencies and compliance risks across locations. Manual systems led to inconsistencies, a lack of transparency, and a high burden on managers.
With TipHaus, Brigantine shifted to a fully digital, automated tip distribution model. The platform standardized processes, integrated seamlessly with payroll, and gave employees daily access to their earned tips, cutting checkout time from 15–20 minutes to just 2 minutes per shift.
Reduce tip calculation time by 80% while eliminating manual errors and discrepancies—ensuring accuracy and legal compliance
Calculate your ROI
Brigantine Restaurants operates 23 hospitality concepts throughout California, including a massive downtown San Diego property housing multiple brands under one roof. With more than 300 tipped employees at some locations and a high volume of daily cash, Brigantine needed a better way to manage tip distribution that aligned with modern operational demands and California’s strict labor laws.
Before TipHaus, Brigantine’s tip process was entirely manual, based on cash servers had in-hand rather than total sales. Managers were physically stuffing envelopes with thousands of dollars in tips every shift, while servers spent 15–20 minutes each night lining out tip-out slips by hand and handling large sums of cash. With over 300 tipped employees at some locations, this could translate to more than 25 hours of valuable staff time spent on tip-outs each day at just one location. One flagship location required regular armored truck pickups due to the volume of on-site cash. Inconsistencies across locations and job roles created confusion and compliance concerns, while employees had little visibility into how tips were calculated or distributed. Clock-in/out errors and job code misalignments further complicated reconciliation efforts.
TipHaus brought structure and automation to Brigantine’s tipping operations. Tips are now calculated based on total sales using TipHaus’ time-of-sale integration and distributed digitally across all locations. Their team implemented a weighted scale for roles like bussers to reflect experience levels fairly. Hostesses, previously excluded, now receive tips through the system. Managers no longer deal with physical cash or envelopes, and on-site cash reserves have been reduced by 75%, eliminating the need for armored truck pickups. What once took servers 15–20 minutes now takes just 2 minutes to complete at the end of their shift. The Earned Tip Access® feature gives staff the option to receive daily digital payouts, improving financial flexibility. TipHaus also integrated with Paylocity to sync job codes and hours in real-time, making reconciliation fast and accurate.
We were growing and asked, how can we be consistent with the tip-out percentages and policies? That’s when we found TipHaus. The challenge was taking all of these jumbled-up tip-out policies and making them into one package, and TipHaus helped us put that into place across all our restaurants. We aren’t fumbling with cash tip envelopes or sorting them into cabinets that get lost, where employees come back looking for their money later. TipHaus has saved us so much time by tipping employees out digitally.
David Tingle
Regional Manager
With TipHaus, Brigantine Restaurants has unified its tip-out policies, minimized financial risk, and streamlined daily operations across 23 concepts. What was once a chaotic, manual process has been replaced by a scalable, transparent system that benefits both managers and staff. By embracing automation, Brigantine has not only saved time and reduced liability but also built greater trust across its workforce.
