It has been a rough run for Agora Bistro, the Greek restaurant which opened in March but was shut down for health-code violations in August, just weeks after an employee walkout for nonpayment of wages.
Agora, 728 Lake St., is now reopened.
The restaurant is owned and operated by Spiro and Sammy Papageorge, who previously ran Papaspiros, also a Greek restaurant, for 15 years across the street.
Spiro Papageorge acknowledged in a telephone interview that several employees were never paid for their time, but he added that the business has been plagued with employee theft and family health problems.
Patrick Creedon, a former Agora bartender, said that for months after the restaurant opened, waiters and kitchen employees had difficulty getting paid by the Papageorges.Â
Creedon recalled asking for his back pay on several occasions but was given the runaround for weeks at a time. He added that, though it never happened to him, he heard several employees received checks that bounced.
Many were never fully compensated, prompting a walkout by most of the staff sometime in early August, according to Creedon, who says he is still owed about $1,200.
A former Agora waiter, who declined to be identified by name, said it would often take as long as six weeks to get paid.
“You’d have to ask every day,” he said. “[Spiro] would say, ‘OK, later,’ and then leave and not come back.”
The waiter said he was not part of the mass walkout in August but finally got fed up, leaving the job shorted by about $100. He said some employees had worked for Papageorge for years (at Agora and his previous restaurant), never knowing exactly when they would receive their checks.
“What happens with employees in this situation is you’re angry, but you’re afraid to quit,” he said. “They know if they quit, they are never going to get [the check].”
Papageorge said he never paid employees because he alleged several were stealing from him. Waiters, servers and bartenders, Papageorge said, frequently did not report cash, instead keeping the money for themselves. He said about $3,000 to $4,000 in cash was never reported.
“I know they took money,” Papageorge said, adding that restaurants never have 100 percent credit card payments. “[Sammy] knew some of them were stealing, and he did not pay them. If you’re stealing money, you’re not getting paid.”
Papageorge said he never reported the alleged theft to the police. He added that Sammy suffered from health issues that prevented him from being at the restaurant to observe or prevent the theft.
“I know what happened, and I know who these people are,” he said, although he declined to provide names of the employees he accuses of stealing from him.
The employee walkout in early August caused Agora to close for several days, and on Aug. 6, the Oak Park Department of Health conducted a routine inspection of the restaurant that resulted in a number of health-code violations.
Among the more serious violations was an “infestation of fruit flies in the bar area,” “fruit-fly activity at the basement dishwashing area,” “extremely poor sanitation practices,” and “food and food debris” left in the kitchen. The kitchen prep cooler also was not in service during the inspection.
Cameron Hendricks, who conducted the inspection, said in a telephone interview that Agora was ordered closed until it corrected the violations. Despite the order, Agora reopened days later without approval from the health department.Â
On Aug. 11, Hendricks conducted a second inspection and ordered the restaurant to close because “critical violations outlined in the Aug. 6 inspection” had not been corrected.
A third inspection on Aug. 18 showed that a small walk-in cooler and a freezer in the basement still were not working and spoiled food was discovered in the walk-in cooler. Fruit flies in the dishwashing area also remained, according to the report.
The problems were not fixed until a fourth inspection on Sept. 19, according to the health department, when Agora was given approval to reopen.Â
Papageorge said he and business partners spent more than $7,000 to fix the walk-in cooler and correct other health-code violations and that several employees have returned and vacant positions have been filled.
He said employees who were never paid will get their money if they come to him and discuss the wages that were never paid.
“Of course they will get paid,” Papageorge said.