Tipped Minimum Wage in Denver (2026)

Key numbers at a glance

How Denver tipped pay works

Denver sets its own minimum wage under the city ordinance administered by Denver Labor in the Auditor's Office. For 2026 the citywide minimum is $19.29 an hour — up from $18.81 in 2025 — adjusted each January 1 for inflation, per denvergov.org. There are no employer-size tiers: every employer in the city owes the citywide rate. For food and beverage workers, the ordinance allows a tipped cash wage of $16.27 an hour with a tip credit of up to $3.02 — but only where the worker actually receives at least $3.02 an hour in documented tips. No documentation, no credit: the employer owes the full $19.29.

The rest follows the classic tip-credit pattern, with the check happening weekly. If your $16.27 cash wage plus the tips you keep average at least $19.29 for every hour of the workweek, the employer owes nothing beyond the cash wage. If they don't, the employer tops up the difference on the check — no averaging across weeks. Run a 40-hour week: the employer owes 40 × $16.27 = $650.80 in cash, and the weekly floor is 40 × $19.29 = $771.60. Keep $480 in tips and you take home $1,130.80 — an effective $28.27 an hour. Keep only $80 in a dead week and cash plus tips is $730.80, short by $40.80, which must appear as make-up pay. The server paycheck calculator runs this check on your own numbers.

Denver's rates stop at the city line, and the drop is steep. Colorado's statewide minimum for 2026 is $15.16 with a $12.14 tipped cash wage — the same $3.02 credit on a much lower base. A server at a restaurant just outside Denver is guaranteed $3.13 an hour less in cash wage than one inside it. The side-by-side:

Denver vs. Colorado vs. the federal rule

Denver's column is the strongest tip-credit deal a server can get short of a no-credit state: a $16.27 guaranteed cash wage — more than seven times the federal $2.13 — and a $19.29 floor that holds every single week, tips or no tips.

What Denver servers should watch

The documentation rule. The $3.02 credit exists only for documented tips. If an employer pays $16.27 but cannot show the tip records that justify the credit, the lawful wage was $19.29 — and the difference is owed. Tip reporting is not just tax hygiene in Denver; it is what makes your cash wage legal.

Overtime at about $25.92. Denver overtime is computed on the full $19.29 minimum, not the cash wage: the OT cash rate = $16.27 + 0.5 × $19.29 ≈ $25.92 an hour, plus tips. An employer running time-and-a-half on $16.27 pays $24.41 and shorts every overtime hour. Colorado's wage orders also add daily overtime after 12 hours for many workers — verify how the daily rule applies to your schedule with Colorado's Division of Labor Standards, and price doubles with the overtime calculator.

The top-up, checked weekly. Ski-season calendar or not, slow weeks are when the $19.29 floor is supposed to catch you — and when make-up pay gets forgotten. Track hours and kept tips per workweek; if the average lands under $19.29, the difference is owed, not requested.

The city line and the calendar. Denver's rate resets every January 1 with CPI — it moved from $18.81 to $19.29 for 2026 — while most suburbs follow the state's lower figures. A restaurant group with rooms inside and outside the city owes two different tipped wages; make sure your hours were coded to the right side. The statewide picture is in our Colorado state breakdown, and other cities are compared on the city minimum wage hub.

Your real number. A $16.27 base plus $27 an hour in tips is a $43-an-hour job. Compute effective hourly — cash wages plus kept tips, divided by hours — before comparing offers in the metro, and remember that the same job one suburb over starts $3.13 an hour lower in guaranteed cash.