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King County Superior Court Judge Cindi Port found that Alan Tagle and Tagle & Partners LLC, who ran five bikini espresso stands around the Puget Sound — most of them under the name Beehive Espresso — violated Washington wage law against a class of 70 former baristas. Her findings of fact and conclusions of law were signed on 28 August, after a multi-week trial. Counsel for the workers put the damages at roughly $1.85 million; fees and interest are still to be set.
The violations the court found are ordinary ones, stacked: minimum wage not paid for all hours worked, tips taken, paid sick leave denied, and restrictions on whether a barista could hold a second job. Judge Port found the conduct intentional and willful, and awarded double damages on the wages and tips workers were made to forfeit.
The missing records are the story
For years the stands issued no paychecks and no paystubs. Hours were not tracked. Baristas took their pay and their tips out of the till, against sales minimums that cost them shifts and earnings when they were not met.
Lindsay Halm, who represented the class, put it as plainly as it can be put: when an employer fails to keep basic payroll records, that is by design. Washington law requires those records precisely because without them a worker cannot say what she is owed — and an employer who keeps none has, in effect, deleted the evidence in advance.
That is why the dollar figure moves depending on who is reporting it. Early accounts said $1.5 million, the plaintiffs’ calculation says about $1.85 million, the law firm says more than $1.8 million, and the final number rises again once fees and interest land. None of those are contradictions. They are what happens when the amount owed has to be reconstructed by the people who were shorted, from a record their employer chose not to keep.
Seventy people, one arithmetic problem
A class action is usually described as a shortcut. Here it was the only route: no individual barista could have proved her own hours, because her own hours were never written down. It took the Fair Work Center and Schroeter Goldmark & Bender, a multi-week trial, and a class of 70 to establish what a paystub would have established in a line.
The Beehive stands in Lynnwood, Bothell and Edmonds have closed permanently.
What to watch
The fee and interest ruling that sets the final judgment. Whether it is collected — a judgment against a closed business is a number until money moves. And whether the Department of Labor & Industries treats a payroll with no records as a trigger for inspection rather than something a worker has to litigate for three years to discover.
Sources: King County Superior Court, findings of fact and conclusions of law signed 28 August 2026; Schroeter Goldmark & Bender and Fair Work Center statements, 3 September 2026; Lynnwood Times, 9 September 2026; KOMO News and The Spokesman-Review, September 2026; Cascade PBS, 22 September 2026. Figures as reported on 22 September 2026.
