How to Hire Restaurant Staff in Berks County
What a Berks restaurant has to pay servers and cooks, what a new hire needs before a first shift, the under-18 rules, and where to find people.
The wage is set by the restaurant three blocks over, not by the state minimum. Pennsylvania's floor is $7.25 an hour, and $2.83 in cash for a tipped server, but every row in the Berks pay table below starts higher. The law says what you may not go under. The market says what fills the shift.
What bites is the paperwork, in two piles: the tip credit and the rules for anyone under 18. Both are day-one work and far more painful to fix later, which is why tipped payroll is worth an hour with a Berks County accountant.
Where to post the opening is its own post. This is the restaurant-specific part.
What a server has to be paid in Pennsylvania.
A tipped server can be paid $2.83 an hour in cash, as long as tips carry the hourly total to at least $7.25 for every hour worked. If they do not, you pay the difference. That gap is the tip credit, and it is available only for someone receiving more than $135 a month in tips.
The conditions attached to it are the part to get right:
- No more than 20 percent of a tipped employee's weekly hours may go to duties that do not directly generate tips. Past that line those hours are paid at $7.25, so tipped and non-tipped hours are tracked separately each workday.
- Rolling silverware, dining room prep and bussing support a server's tipped work. Preparing food and cleaning the kitchen or bathrooms are not part of the tipped occupation at all.
- Tips paid by card belong to the employee in full. Processing fees never come out of them.
One notice lands at hire, in writing: the tip pooling arrangement, at or before the job offer or at least one pay period before the pool starts. A second one is ongoing, also in writing: the per-hour tip credit, each time it changes from the week before.
Overtime for a tipped employee has its own calculation. Get it from your payroll provider before you schedule anyone for a 45-hour week.
What restaurant work pays in Berks County.
Here is what the work pays across the county.
| Occupation | 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Waiters and waitresses | $8.14 | $11.20 | $14.79 | $22.10 | $29.64 |
| Cooks, restaurant | $10.94 | $13.94 | $17.32 | $18.33 | $21.55 |
| Fast food and counter workers | $10.64 | $12.63 | $13.51 | $14.48 | $17.21 |
| Dishwashers | $10.30 | $10.73 | $13.30 | $14.56 | $17.30 |
Hourly wage percentiles, Berks County.
The state minimum is a legal floor, not a hiring number. Read the waiter column as a wage line, not a server's take-home.
What a new hire needs before the first shift.
There is no Pennsylvania food handler card for servers and line staff. Two things do bind: one certified person for the building, and training for whoever serves alcohol.
Food safety: one certified person, not a card for every hire.
One employee holds the certificate, is in charge on shift, and has to be present or immediately reachable during all hours you are open. One person covers one facility, so a second Berks location needs its own. The certificate is posted publicly.
The course has to be a manager-level program from an accredited provider, not a food handler course. Pennsylvania sets no validity period of its own, so ask the provider what theirs is.
The clock to watch is turnover: lose your certified employee and you have three months to replace them. Berks Career and Technology Center is a state-listed provider, and the Department of Agriculture's food safety line is 717-787-4315.
Alcohol service: RAMP training within six months of hire.
Anyone whose primary responsibility includes serving or selling alcohol, or checking ages at the door, completes RAMP server/seller training within six months of being hired. Training done in the two years before the hire counts, and it expires after two years, so it is a renewal you track.
Your PLCB-approved manager has their own deadline: owner/manager training within 180 days of the board approving the appointment, the first time in a classroom.
Certification of the establishment is separate. You can choose it, and a citation or a conditional licensing agreement can require it. It asks for four pieces:
- new employee orientation on the liquor law checklist, within 30 days of hire
- at least half of your alcohol service personnel trained
- the owner or manager trained
- the signage posted
For an establishment with a clean four years, it narrows the fine range on a citation for serving a minor or a visibly intoxicated person. The license stays on the table either way.
How to hire restaurant staff under 18 in a Berks kitchen.
A 16 or 17 year old can serve food and clear tables in a licensed Berks restaurant. Nobody under 18 serves alcohol or tends bar, and a conventional licensed restaurant cannot employ anyone under 16.
Before the first shift you need:
- A work permit from the school district where the minor lives, transferable and good until they turn 18. You keep a copy; the minor keeps the original.
- A valid Sunday sales permit, if you serve alcohol, copied to the school issuing officer before the minor starts.
- Written notice to that issuing officer within five days of the start date, giving duties, hours, age and permit number, and again within five days of the last day.
- The hours abstract posted where anyone under 18 works, plus a list of the minors and their schedules on site.
While school is in session: eight hours a day, 28 a week, nothing before 6 a.m. or after midnight. During a school vacation it opens to ten hours a day and 48 a week, and the minor can refuse anything past 44 without retaliation.
Six consecutive days is the cap, and a 30-minute break is due once they pass five consecutive hours. The equipment rules reach everyone under 18:
- Power slicers, grinders, choppers, commercial mixers, dough sheeters and bread slicers, cleaning them included. Two narrow carve-outs: a household-comparable countertop mixer, no more than half a horsepower, a bowl no larger than five quarts, not hardwired in; and a fully guarded pizza-dough roller, which they may operate but never clean or service.
- Balers and compactors. A 16 or 17 year old may load a conforming paper baler or cardboard compactor, never operate or unload one. A baler or compactor handling anything but paper is off limits entirely.
- Delivery driving. Taking prepared food to a customer by car is off limits under 18.
The fine is $500 per violation on conviction, $1,500 for a repeat, or an administrative penalty of up to $5,000 from the department, not both for the same conduct.
Where the next cook comes from in Berks County.
Two career and technology centers teach cooking in a working kitchen here, and both place students with employers through capstone work-based learning.
Berks Career and Technology Center runs culinary arts at East Campus in Oley and West Campus in Leesport, each with a student-run restaurant open to the public for lunch. Reading Muhlenberg, on Warren Road, teaches culinary arts and baking and pastry arts. Call 610-374-4073 or 610-921-7300.
Reading Area Community College's Institutional and Commercial Cooking certificate ends in a co-op placement, and employers reach students at careercenter@racc.edu.
PA CareerLink Berks County, at 1920 Kutztown Road, Suite F in Reading, reimburses at least half of an eligible new hire's wages for a set training period. Full-time work at 30 hours or more, permanent rather than seasonal, is potentially eligible, and the application is approved before the first day. Call 610-988-1395 at least five business days ahead.
The state restaurant and lodging association runs a registered apprenticeship with tracks from line cook up to restaurant manager. The National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation funds the training, so it costs the business and the apprentice nothing. The association's workforce development specialist onboards employers, at 717-963-8375.
Geography does some of the hiring for you. A cook who can walk to three other kitchens has options.
| Town | Restaurant listings |
|---|---|
| Reading | 192 |
| Wyomissing | 53 |
| West Reading | 31 |
| Temple | 18 |
| Hamburg | 16 |
| Kutztown | 15 |
| Sinking Spring | 15 |
| Boyertown | 14 |
| Fleetwood | 12 |
| Birdsboro | 10 |
Active Berks County restaurant listings by mailing-address town, September 3, 2026.
Listings cluster in Reading and the boroughs beside it, where the walk to the next job is shortest. Out toward Hamburg, Kutztown and Boyertown the next kitchen is a drive. Price the shift for the map you are on, then post the job. A person reviews it before it goes live.
Questions Berks owners ask.
Do servers in Pennsylvania have to be paid $7.25 an hour?
In total, yes. The cash wage can be $2.83 an hour for a tipped employee, but tips have to bring the hourly total to at least $7.25 for every hour worked, and you make up any shortfall.
Can a 16 year old work in a Berks restaurant that serves alcohol?
Yes, serving food and clearing tables, if the establishment holds a valid Sunday sales permit and copies it to the school issuing officer before the minor starts. Serving alcohol and tending bar start at 18.
Can cooks and dishwashers share in the tip pool?
Only if everyone in the pool is paid the full minimum wage and you take no tip credit. Take the credit on servers and the pool is limited to occupations that customarily and regularly receive tips.
Sources
- 34 Pa. Code 231.101a, "Minimum wages": the $7.25 minimum, the $2.83 tipped cash wage and the $135 monthly tip threshold.
- 34 Pa. Code 231.111, "Tip credit for non-tipped duties": the 20 percent limit on duties that do not directly generate tips.
- Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry, "Overtime and Tipped Worker Rules in PA": which duties are tip-producing, supporting, or outside the tipped occupation, and the pay owed past the 20 percent line.
- 34 Pa. Code 231.112, "Tip pooling": written notice of a tip pool at or before the job offer, and who may be in the pool.
- 34 Pa. Code 231.113, "Credit card and other processing fees": processing fees may not be deducted from tips.
- 34 Pa. Code 231.34, "Additional records for tipped employees": separate daily tracking of tipped and non-tipped hours, and written notice when the tip credit changes.
- 29 CFR 531.54, "Tip pools": cooks and dishwashers in a pool only where no tip credit is taken, and the bar on managers and supervisors drawing from a pool.
- 29 CFR 531.60, "Overtime payments": a tipped employee's regular rate includes the tip credit taken.
- 3 Pa.C.S. Ch. 65, the Food Employee Certification Act: one certified employee per facility, the three-month turnover clock, and the accredited-program requirement.
- Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, "Food Employee Certification": manager-level courses rather than handler courses, posting the certificate, and the food safety phone line.
- Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, approved food employee certification course listing: Berks Career and Technology Center as a listed Berks County provider.
- Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board, "RAMP Training": server/seller training within six months of hire, and classroom-first owner/manager training.
- 40 Pa. Code Ch. 5, Subchapter I: who counts as alcohol service personnel, the two-year expiry, the 180-day manager deadline, and the 30-day new employee orientation.
- Pennsylvania Liquor Code, 47 P.S. 4-471, 4-471.1 and 4-493(13): the fine ranges and their conditions, and the employment ages on licensed premises.
- Pennsylvania Child Labor Act, Act 151 of 2012: work permits, the five-day notices, hours and days, the rest break, the Sunday sales condition, and the penalties.
- Pennsylvania Department of Education, "Child Labor Law": who issues a work permit, and that it is transferable and valid until 18.
- 29 CFR 570.61 and 570.62, hazardous occupations orders 10 and 11: power slicers and mixers, and the countertop mixer and pizza-dough roller carve-outs.
- 29 CFR 570.63, hazardous occupations order 12: loading, operating and unloading balers and compactors.
- 29 CFR 570.52, hazardous occupations order 2: prepared food delivery as a prohibited trip for drivers under 18.
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, Reading, PA: the Berks County hourly wage percentiles.
- Berks Career and Technology Center, "Culinary Arts" and "Contact Us": the two campuses, the student-run restaurants and the school phone number.
- Reading Muhlenberg Career and Technology Center, "Culinary Arts" and "Work-Based Learning": the programs, the ServSafe exam, capstone placements and the main number.
- Reading Area Community College, "Institutional and Commercial Cooking, CC": the six required courses, including the cooperative education placement.
- Reading Area Community College, "Career Services: Resources for Employers": the Career Services email and phone for employers.
- PA CareerLink Berks County, "Employers": the on-the-job training reimbursement, the full-time and permanent conditions, the five business day lead time, and the address and Business Services number.
- Pennsylvania Restaurant and Lodging Association, "Apprenticeships": the apprenticeship tracks, who funds the training, and the workforce development contact.
Wage figures, statutory rates, penalty amounts and program deadlines are as of September 2026. The Berks listing counts in the town table carry the date shown in its caption.