KOUTSOUDAKIS LED FIRM, KI LEGAL, BRINGS LEGACY OF RESTAURANT INDUSTRY EXPERIENCE TO METRO NY’S HOSPITALITY COMMUNITY

The relationship between restaurant owners and lawyers is not often described as symbiotic. Typically, we see lawyers called in to defend a client when a restaurant needs finds itself facing potential litigation.

In reality, However, working with an attorney who specializes in hospitality law can be a real asset that helps a restaurant business solidify their daily operations with the goal of growing to the next level. Today’s restaurateur is faced with a variety of legal challenges. From wage and labor compliance to the creation of real estate lease agreements and succession plans that set business owners up for success, selecting the correct attorney is vital for the future of your restaurant.

Andreas Koutsoudakis is the Co-Founder and Litigation Division Managing Partner of KI Legal. Koutsoudakis has created a law practice that specializes in working with restaurants and foodservice entities across the NYC metro area. As a young man, Koutsoudakis grew up in his father’s restaurant, spending most of his summers and college days helping the family business serve its loyal customer base.

His calling proved to be the law, and it evolved to give him the opportunity to utilize all his family business background to assist others in the restaurant community. Follow- ing his graduation from law school in 2008, the Manhattan-based attorney started his career working with businesses to settle wage and hour lawsuits. Soon after, he realized that there was more he could do to get ahead of these problems for his clients. “Quickly I realized I didn’t want to build a practice whose main purpose was just settling malpractice suits. I wanted to build a firm concept that could provide more for restaurant businesses by being providing preventative and proactive services.” explained Koutsoudakis.

With this goal in mind, Koutsoudakis and his fellow CoFounder,Michael Iakovou, began to create labor and employment compliance packages that were both accessible and broad enough to fit the needs of most restaurant business models; by doing so, Koutsoudakis aimed to put the power in the business owner’s hands, allowing them to become compliant and get ahead of any other potential legal complications. Through these packages, Koutsoudakis drafted policies and plans for clients to handle their labor and employment compliance, from record keeping for hours todiscrimination and harassment defense, and more. Ultimately, Koutsoudakis designed a full portfolio of afford- able legal systems designed to cater to the needs of the unique needs of the restaurant community.

Part of KI Legal’s hospitality services has always been to debunk the many myths associated with on-going labor compliance – one such myth being that an operator can rely ontheir payroll company to provide the proper documentation to keep them from potential discrimination actions. According to Koutsoudakis, “the payroll company’s focus is primarily on sending out the printed checks to your employees. However, this can be misconstrued as legal compliance when in fact it’s merely record keeping. The contribution these companies provide solely deal with the taxes and withholding, not necessarily keeping track of the actual number of hours worked. In other words, they will factor in however many hours the payroll manager inputs, which sometimes may be inaccurate. You must also consider the independent restaurants that have employees working off the books, which then becomes a tax issue not a payroll issue. How do they stay complaint? These companies don’t necessarily account for certain continued on page 106