— An Apex restaurant has paid $53,100 in back wages to 18 employees to resolve a federal investigation into alleged overtime and minimum wage violations, authorities said Thursday.

The U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division determined that La Rancherita Mexican Restaurant, at 102 N. Salem St., violated federal minimum wage requirements by requiring servers and other tipped employees to wait for the day’s first customer to enter the restaurant before clocking-in, instead of doing so when their shifts began. Authorities said the practice resulted in unrecorded and unpaid work time.

La Rancherita also paid its cooks flat salaries without regard to the number of hours they worked, leading to overtime violations whenever those workers logged more than 40 hours a week, authorities said. The restaurant then recorded false hourly rates for the workers in an attempt to show overtime in its payroll records, authorities said.

"Employers must understand their responsibilities and pay employees all of the wages they have legally earned," Wage and Hour District Director Richard Blaylock said in a statement.