Witnesses in cafe tips row unable to explain mystery card machine which pulled in €5,000 in 18 months

Staff waited nearly two years to get their split of over €5,000 in customer gratuities from a tap-to-tip machine installed at a Limerick City cafe in unexplained circumstances, a tribunal has heard. At the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC), both the former manager of Esquires Coffee Limerick and the proprietor of the business denied responsibility for the installation of the electronic tip machine. The owner said she did not know it was there at all until the manager came looking for her share of the proceeds. By the time the tips were distributed, a quarter of the money had been eaten up by fees charged by the machine’s provider, JustTip, the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) noted in a decision published on Wednesday. READ MOREThe tribunal has now ordered Rise and Grind Ltd, trading as Esquires Coffee Limerick on Catherine Street, to pay €100 in compensation to the cafe’s ex-manager, Hueian Hsiao, for a delay in paying her wages. Ms Hsiao worked on and off at the cafe between May 2023 and August 2025, when she asked her employer about the tips machine 10 days before resigning her position as manager. Customers regularly used the card tip machine, Ms Hsiao told the tribunal, but she said she had never been shown any breakdown of how electronic tips were being shared with staff. What size does your pension actually need to be for a comfortable retirement?In reply to Ms Hsiao’s queries, company director Agata Danielkiewicz replied: “Regarding the tips machine: I’m not aware of its operation, I don’t have access on the site, and I’m not responsible for it.”Ms Hsiao submitted further that after she registered a complaint under the Payment of Wages Act 1991 against her former employer, Danielkiewicz was in a position to access the tip machine data and tell her she was due €350. Ms Hsiao maintained she was actually due €1,000. The tribunal was told that the after fees of €1,268.57 were deducted by JustTip from the total paid into the machine by customers between May 2024 and August 2025, there was €3,731.44 left to distribute to a number of current and former staff. Hsiao considered the fees being deducted – just over a quarter of the €5,000 left by customers using it – to be “unreasonable”. Under cross-examination by Edward Kelly of Holmes O’Malley Sexton Solicitors LLP, for the respondent, Hsiao said she “did not know who dealt with the company who provided the tips machine”. She said at some point she had asked another member of staff about the device, but he “knew nothing about it”. Danielkiewicz said in her evidence she was mostly based at her firm’s other site in Galway and was “not aware of the machine in Limerick”. The company director’s evidence was that she contacted JustTip upon learning about the machine, and later had it deactivated. Danielkiewicz said Hsiao, as the manager, “should have known about the machine and removed it”. JustTip’s records showed the machine was activated late in 2024, she said. There had been “no requirement to sign a contract” with JustTip, Ms Danielkiewicz said. The company director said the company had reached out to “all staff, current and former” about paying them their share of the tip machine money. Hsiao, the tribunal noted, confirmed in a post-hearing submission that she received a payment of €392.96 for the outstanding tips a week on from the hearing of her complaint in early March 2026. In her decision, adjudicator Ewa Sobanska wrote: “Neither the respondent nor the complainant could explain how and when the piece of equipment was installed in the premises.”While she had “reservations” about Hsiao’s evidence, she found the employer in breach of the Payment of Wages Act 1991 both when the worker filed her complaint and on the day of the hearing, Sobanska wrote. While it was the employer’s duty to distribute any electronic tips, Hsiao had contributed to the delay, Sobanska concluded. She awarded €100 in compensation for the delay.