§548.304 Excluding value of lunches furnished.

(a) Section548.3(d) authorizes as established basic rates: The rate or rates which may be used under the Act to compute overtime compensation of the employee but excluding the cost of meals where the employer customarily furnishes not more than a single meal per day.

(b) It is the purpose of §548.3(d) to permit the employer upon agreement with his employees to omit from the computation of overtime the cost of a free daily lunch or other single daily meal furnished to the employees. The policy behind §548.3(d) is derived from the Administrator's experience that the amount of additional overtime compensation involved in such cases is trivial and does not justify the bookkeeping required in computing it. Section 548.3(d) is applicable only in cases where the employer customarily furnishes no more than a single meal a day. If more than one meal a day is customarily furnished by the employer all such meals must be taken into account in computing the regular rate of pay and the overtime compensation due. ¹² In a situation where the employer furnishes three meals a day to his employees he may not, under §548.3(d), omit one of the three meals in computing overtime compensation. However, if an employer furnishes a free lunch every day and, in addition, occasionally pays "supper money" ¹³ when the employees work overtime, the cost of the lunches and the supper money may both be excluded from the overtime rates.