Surprised this comment is 15 hours old and never got the "But they're legally required to! Complain to the Department of Labor and sue them!" response.
While I'm sure most restaurants stay legal, there's a non-zero number of restaurants with owners that don't make up the missing pay and let workers end up making less than minimum wage, but the workers don't complain because they're truly desperate for work, or their local government won't do anything about it.
Now I'm remembering the Amy's Baking Company episode of Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares where one of the owners, Samy, admitted that he takes all the tips his wait staff make, despite being illegal (Source: https://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs15.htm)
I'm sure you're right, because that's the general attitude they operate with in that industry, but I was a server for six years and most of my friends still are, and it's totally unheard of for a server to end the night below minimum wage. I've never known a server to come away with less than kitchen staff and the norm was much higher. A really bad night at a cheap buffet was 60 in five hours. If it was slower than that servers and kitchen staff would just be sent home.
They did at my crappy small chain (in a Southern state without as many worker protections). It was automatically done in their payroll software based on declared tips/hours (where most servers didn't declare cash tips and were thus more likely to make the non-server minimum wage).
Surely it is if $2.13/hour leaves enough left over to hire a lawyer, or the employee is confident that the payout will be greater than a decade of lost opportunities as "someone who sues their employer".
