My name is Brice Peeples and I as many others who worked at the restaurant in Lake Wales, Florida, known as Wing University have been mislead, tricked, fooled, and left unpaid for months by our former boss Ray Pennington, who owes his employees over $17,000 in wages that have only been repaid with bounced checks, Zelle payments worth quarter portions of our checks, and false promises of money coming soon.
Ray Pennington offered me (Brice) a position as a Crew Trainer at his restaurant that he was starting on June 3rd 2025, a pay of $16.25 which for the area of Polk County was amazing for the fast food industry. I, and the other hires, were told to join a Zoom meeting for orientation, which unbeknownst to us at the time, was a training video that belonged to another food company and Ray Pennington of RP Food Groups lied to us saying he was the Director of Operations while the owner was a "Rich white man" named "Robert" a fictional character that he would blame the fault on, a way to detach himself from the 'company' he in truth owned.
After the grand opening, I was promoted to Kitchen Manager, or "Director of Culinary" on the ornamental paper. First, things started to seem off when we stopped receiving shipments of food from Sysco for weeks. Running out of food and leaving the General Manager (Mikhail Walker) under Ray's command to resort to buying food from the Save-a-lot that was behind our store location. Ray had led us to believe that Sysco was having problems because of the rainy weather, but the restaurants in a 1-3 mile radius such as Beef-o-Bradys, Woody's BBQ, and Lin'contro were receiving their shipments as scheduled.
This set off the first of signs, the next was a shock to all of us. Ray had showed us the new 2025 Ford truck he had bought and shortly after announced that he had cut off partnership with Toast (a payroll company that is popular among restaurants), and told us we would be receiving money through Checks or Zelle/CashApp. Many of us raised eyebrows in concern that it would be considered being paid under the table but he assured us that it was legal and quickly brushed the subject.
The massive blow that came next is what left us in ruin. The checks he wrote started bouncing back, employees such as Hailey Lee, Zana Smith, Elizabeth Cardona, myself, and many others had the money that they had spent on bills, repairs, etc ripped from our accounts. Hailey Lee, as of right now, is still in the negative with her bank after her check was taken out the day after she paid a mechanic to fix her car.
At the store, we had an open-door policy for anyone to talk to the managers. I was the one who was originally the crew trainer, and despite my promotion never stopped helping the people with what they needed, and naturally the calls came to me. I received a wall of emails, messages and calls about what happened with the employees money. Asking for me to ask Ray what was going on. The managers had a meeting that same day at 2pm and with my own check ripped, I had come in with the rest of my managerial team and among ourselves discussed the issue as many of us had already noticed the 40-hour checks we received were gone.
Enters Ray Pennington, his deceitful smile not amusing any of us. He sits to talk about changes he'll be making to the restaurant, such as the shipment company we'll use, that he had purchased a food truck to use as a 'second location', and was midway through a sentence when an employee (anonymous) came in very upset about her check, asking where her money was. This changed Ray's mood from his false smile to a face of rage, he demanded her to drive to her bank and put him on the phone, and when she refused saying he needs to be the one to call them because it was his check he wrote he started cursing at her until I peaked up, unsettled by his attitude towards her and said "I received calls about the same thing on my way over here, and mine was taken out as well. Five people called me about their checks bouncing, what money they lost. I told them I'd bring it up to you.". This shifted his focus off of the employee to me, and the next scene became one I won't ever forget. He looked at me and said "What the **** do you want me to do about it." and as I tried to explain "We have an open-door policy and I told them I would talk to you about their checks-" I was cut off and told "This isn't going to be a dialogue, this is now a monologue. You're going to sit and listen to what I'm about to say. You and all your little friends that talked all this morning are hereby terminated for gossiping about pay, I fired people here for the same thing and you are no exception. Turn your uniform in." I turned as white as a ghost, utterly shocked with who the real Ray Pennington was. Then he pointed to me and instructed to take off my chefs jacket and hat and I did so in front of my now-former manager peers and handed it to him.
I walked out still shocked, I was fired, losing my only income that I used to support my grandma and disabled grandpa that I live with to take care of because I tried doing not just my job, but the right thing. I called Zana and that whole night, we starting researching who it was we were really working for.
We started looking at the RP Food Group website, who had Daryl Jason Burrows listed as the Director of Operations, and Erica Simpson as the HR Manager. There was an empty frame where an image had been taken down and we read the About The Company portion which had shown us that Ray Pennington was the true owner of the company despite him taking his face down from the page. What first sent us spiraling deeper was when we searched Daryl's name up to see what he used to do and we were shocked beyond measure.
The first thing that popped up for Daryl Jason Burrows was his own page in the Florida Sex Offender registry for Child Molestation. Our jaws dropped, especially because the restaurant we worked in had many minors working there, with Daryl frequently being in the kitchen among those minors. We started digging further, if Ray had surrounded himself with people such as Daryl, what had he done himself?
We looked on Showcase.polkcountyclerk (a site for residents of Polk County Florida to view what case/traffic violations/convictions a person has been in) and we found this isn't Ray Pennington's first time committing Fraud, in fact in April 22nd of 2025 (a month and a week before he hired me for his company) he was arrested and found guilty of 'Scheme to Defraud', 'Grand Theft', 'Counterfeit', 'Counterfeit with an utter instrument', 'Forgery', and 'Forgery used Utter Instrument'.
Among these serious charges, it was also on record that during this trial he claimed Indignant, which means he hasn't the money to pay for the fines against him.
The man we had trusted, with the security of our job, the safety guaranteed to the parents of the minors working, and the false promises that we would be paid every penny for the countless hours that we had clocked in turned to be a dark line of repetitive lies, gaslighting, heinous acts, and disgusting disregard of safety of the minors and staff.
I had attempted to warn my former coworkers about all of this, and Ray took the opportunity of my absence to twist their minds to believing that he would follow through and that I was attempting to derail them as payback for me being fired.
Many continued to work for him in the weeks to come, paychecks continuing to bounce back while he instead paid for a custom wrap on his food truck, not prioritizing the employees that he had promised to pay. Some stayed there out of desperation, having bills to pay, family and children to feed, and rent going overdue.
As of September 4th, the Wing University restaurant on 612 Hwy-60, Lake Wales Florida had its water cut off, and the restaurant closed it's doors, with the owner making frequent visits while former employees would drop in and ask where their money is, only to be ignored and brushed off, as their former boss rushed back to his new truck.
The employees to this day, have not been paid what they are owed by the sinister Ray Pennington, Daryl Burrows, and Erica Simpson. The corrupt former owner of the Restaurant has other plans than to pay his former employees. He has posted on a page on Facebook known as 'Singles in Detroit' that he will be moving to Detroit Michigan soon, at the end of the month.
This leaves all of us who put our trust in him at the mercy of all of you, who read this far and made it through to the end. I and the rest of the team thank you, and even if you aren't able to spare a donation, we appreciate you hearing our story. The goal of this page is for the people to hopefully get back a portion of what they lost working for this evil man, thank you for your time and patience.
-Brice Peeples, former Kitchen Manager at Wing University
Organizer
Brice Peeples
Organizer
Lake Wales, FL