California Overtime and Double Time for Restaurants

Daily overtime

Federal law only requires overtime after 40 hours in a week. California adds a daily rule on top of it. It’s the one rule restaurant owners most often miss, because a single long shift can trigger it even in a week with plenty of days off.

Hours worked in a day	Rate
0 to 8 hours	Regular rate
More than 8, up to 12 hours	1.5x regular rate
More than 12 hours	2x regular rate

A line cook who covers a 13-hour double because someone called out earns 4 hours at time and a half and 1 hour at double time that day, even if it’s their only long shift of the week.

The 7th consecutive day

Work 7 days in a row within the same workweek and California adds a separate premium on the 7th day, regardless of how many hours were worked on the other 6.

Hours worked on the 7th consecutive day	Rate
0 to 8 hours	1.5x regular rate
More than 8 hours	2x regular rate

“Workweek” is whatever fixed 7-day period the business has designated, not a calendar week. A server who’s off Monday through Wednesday but works Thursday through the following Wednesday hasn’t triggered it, because those days fall across two different workweeks. The rule looks at consecutive days within one workweek only.

How daily and weekly overtime interact

Daily overtime hours count first. Weekly overtime only applies to hours that haven’t already been paid at a premium rate, so you don’t pay both on the same hour.

Example: An employee works 9 hours a day, 5 days in a row.

• Each day: 8 regular hours + 1 hour of daily overtime = 45 total hours for the week, 5 of them overtime.
• Weekly total is 45 hours, which is 5 over the 40-hour threshold.
• But those 5 hours were already paid as daily overtime, so no additional weekly overtime is owed. The employee doesn’t get paid twice for the same 5 hours.

What “regular rate” includes

Overtime and double time are paid on the employee’s regular rate, not just their base hourly wage. If a server also earns a nondiscretionary bonus that pay period, such as a fixed weekly incentive for hitting a sales target, the bonus has to be folded into the regular rate before the overtime multiplier is applied. The California Supreme Court settled the math for flat sum bonuses in Alvarado: the bonus gets divided by the nonovertime hours worked, not the total hours. Dividing by the smaller number produces a higher regular rate than dividing by every hour worked.