It is the largest settlement against a restaurant since the D.C. Council granted the attorney general’s office the authority to bring wage theft cases in 2017, spokeswoman Marrisa Geller said. Four years ago, the Matchbox Food Group, which then operated Ted’s Bulletin restaurants, agreed to pay more than $142,000 in unpaid wages to workers in a settlement with the attorney general’s office.
Under the terms of the settlement, Swahili Village M Street LLC and its two principals — Kevin Onyona, founder and chief executive, and Emad Shoeb, chief operating officer — must pay 72 workers more than $260,000 in restitution for what Attorney General Brian L. Schwalb alleges was an “egregious pattern of wage theft.” Schwalb’s office claims Swahili Village paid workers as little as $5 per hour (including tips), did not pay overtime wages, failed to distribute tips and provided no sick leave, as required by D.C. law. Many of these workers, the attorney general says, were people of color, including young African immigrants.
The settlement also includes more than $197,600 in penalties paid to the District as well as more than $69,000 to fund a claims administrator who will contact eligible workers and distribute the money owed them. (In 2020, Matchbox made only a $5,000 payment to the District, which went “toward the city’s costs in pursuing the case,” according to a release at the time.)
As part of the agreement with the District, Swahili Village, Onyona and Shoeb admitted no wrongdoing or liability.
Schwalb’s office filed a complaint last August against the restaurant, Onyona and Shoeb, alleging they had violated multiple D.C. labor laws, including provisions on overtime, minimum wage and worker tips. “These egregious and systemic violations, which persisted for years, reveal that wage theft and worker abuse were no accident at Swahili Village DC — they were part of the business plan,” the attorney general alleged in the lawsuit.
Graham Lake, chief of the Workers’ Rights and Antifraud Section with the attorney general’s office, applauded the settlement.
“We think it’s an important settlement for a number of reasons,” Lake told The Post. “It vindicates an important set of rights for workers in the District: minimum wage, overtime, paid sick leave. I think it’s an example of where fair enforcement … is important not just to the workers whose rights were violated, but also to ensuring a fair playing field among businesses that are complying with the law.”
Reached by phone, Onyona said he agreed to the settlement “just to get this thing off my back” and get back to running his restaurant. (The defendants have denied any wrongdoing in their response to the attorney general’s lawsuit.) The chef-owner told The Post that he will have to borrow money to meet the obligations of the agreement. He said he would also have to let go “at least” 20 employees, approximately half his current staff.
“I have to make some hard decisions now,” Onyona said. “It’s not really looking very good for me, I can tell you that.”
Susan Salen, the attorney representing the restaurant in the wage theft case, declined to comment on the consent order settlement because it had not yet been approved by the court. “I’m not going to comment on something that’s not official,” Salen said. The attorney general’s office said the court’s approval was a formality.
The original Swahili Village operated in a casual, 45-seat location next to a Shell gas station in Beltsville, Md., before relocating to a larger strip-center space in the same community in 2016. But when Onyona decided to open a Swahili Village on M Street NW in February 2020, he went upscale. His D.C. restaurant would be a place to experience Kenyan cooking in a fine-dining setting, sumptuous enough to attract well-heeled diners and diplomats alike. Onyona poured more than $2 million into renovating the space, formerly home of the fine-dining mainstay Vidalia. Uhuru Kenyatta, then the president of Kenya, attended the ribbon-cutting ceremony, according to an Eater DC story at the time.
But just weeks after opening, D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser shut down indoor dining. Not set up for takeaway or delivery, Swahili Village immediately saw its sales plummet, Onyona told The Post. If the restaurant made $300, it was a good day, he said. Unlike his Beltsville restaurant, the Swahili Village in the District never received any government assistance during the pandemic, including Paycheck Protection Program loans. (The Beltsville location received two draws of PPP cash, for a total of $567,000, all forgiven.)
Rowles Adams was one of the early hires at Swahili Village in D.C. He was brought on board as a bartender, and he stayed at the restaurant for about a year and a half. He said he was paid the tipped minimum wage, plus tips. In all that time, Adams said he never received a payroll or direct deposit check. Management, he said, calculated his pay and tips based on the number of hours that Adams said he worked, not by any internal software that recorded sales, tips and employee shifts.
“They would write us Bank of America checks,” Adams said. “I’ve never, ever seen that before in my life.”
In its complaint last year, the attorney general’s office claimed that Swahili Village failed to maintain employment records, such as itemized statements that indicate total hours worked, gross and net wages, deductions and a breakdown of wages and tips.
In a way, Adams said, he was fortunate. He was at least getting paid for his work at Swahili Village, even if he wasn’t always getting the full amount owed him, including gratuities that he said were added to checks. He said some of his co-workers — those with dependents and larger financial obligations than his — weren’t as lucky.
“Some people weren’t seeing paychecks or did not see a paycheck for a few weeks, or at all, while they were working there,” Adams said.
According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the food services sector is among the worst offenders for wage theft. In fiscal year 2023, the Wage and Hour Division recovered more than $29 million owed to nearly 26,000 food service workers. The department noted it was the third-highest amount of back wages recovered among low-wage, high-violation industries.
At Swahili Village these days, Onyona says operations are compliant with D.C. labor laws. To make sure, the negotiated settlement stipulates that, for three years, Swahili Village must submit reports to the attorney general’s office documenting its compliance.
The reason the attorney general was open to settling the case, said Lake, the chief of the Workers’ Rights and Antifraud Section, was because the office believed that “moving forward the company will be complying with the various provisions of D.C. wage and hour laws that we think they violated.”
