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Big Tips, Big Hearts, Big Fin

Written By Scott Joseph On June 1, 2020

Big Fin check

Big Fin Seafood Kitchen, the Restaurant Row favorite, has managed to keep operating the last couple of months providing takeout and delivery, but it did it with a skeleton crew of mainly managerial staffers. The bulk of the restaurant’s employees were furloughed.

And those of you who continued to order Big Fin’s Scallops Orleans, Crab Cakes and other delicious delicacies showed your appreciation with generous tips.

But general manager Michael Venutolo, who joined Big Fin just before the shutdown and who is the restaurant’s first GM in its 11 year history (!), didn’t feel right keeping the tips. “We were still getting paychecks,” Venutolo told a reporter for WKMG News 6, “the hardworking staff weren’t.” So he proposed to the management team that they set the gratuities aside and save them for the regular staffers when they returned.

So they did. They saved $5,000 in tips.

Big Fin doesn’t just have a new general manager, it has new owners, Philippe Villain and Kevin O’Donnell. And the two of them decided they would match what was in the tip jar and increase it to 10 grand.

And that’s what will be distributed to the employees as they return to work.

I thought you could use a little good news today.

Here’s a link to the story News 6 ran.

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