{"id":33859,"date":"2023-07-20T11:48:03","date_gmt":"2023-07-20T15:48:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=33859"},"modified":"2023-07-20T11:48:09","modified_gmt":"2023-07-20T15:48:09","slug":"update-moes-southwest-grill-franchise-owner-responds-after-employees-say-they-werent-paid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2023\/07\/20\/update-moes-southwest-grill-franchise-owner-responds-after-employees-say-they-werent-paid\/","title":{"rendered":"UPDATE: Moe\u2019s Southwest Grill franchise owner responds after employees say they weren\u2019t paid"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Tony Friel owns 18 Moe\u2019s Southwest Grill franchises between Tampa Bay and Orlando and admits his&nbsp;employees were paid four days late.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"alignright size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"225\" height=\"225\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 225px) 100vw, 225px\" src=\"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/download-5.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-33825\" srcset=\"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/download-5.jpg 225w, https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/download-5-150x150.jpg 150w\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cIt\u2019s true, they were supposed to be paid on Friday and they weren\u2019t paid,\u201d Friel said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Friel has around 250 employees that get paid bi-weekly. He says banks he does business with didn\u2019t transfer funds from credit and debit sales from the Fourth of July holiday weekend quickly enough for him to make payroll.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThey shorted us about $325,000 on July 4 because they didn\u2019t pay our credit card deposits and that rolled over to payroll,\u201d Friel explained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It\u2019s why the franchise owner told 8 On Your Side he sent employees an email explaining he wouldn\u2019t be able to pay them until a few days later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI said listen, I\u2019m sorry there\u2019s nothing we can do about it, you\u2019re not going to get paid until early this week, so I myself put in about $115,000 to $125,000 of my own money.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The payment delay prompted some of Friel\u2019s employees to put signs outside his restaurants saying he had not paid them, so they were closing the stores.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Friel says all of his employees were paid by Tuesday evening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThe only way this could\u2019ve been worse is if it happened on July 30th when they had rent due.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Friel opened his first Moe\u2019s franchise in 2002 and says he\u2019s never paid employees late. He\u2019s taken extra measures to ensure this never occurs again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tony Friel owns 18 Moe\u2019s Southwest Grill franchises between Tampa Bay and Orlando and admits his&nbsp;employees were paid four days late. \u201cIt\u2019s true, they were supposed to be paid on&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33825,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[14],"tags":[5486],"class_list":["post-33859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-update-moes-southwest-grill-franchise-owner-responds-after-employees-say-they-werent-paid"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33859"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33859\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}