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Last week was a busy one in coffee unionizing. Workers at Discourse Coffee in Milwaukee and at Cat & Cloud in Santa Cruz both announced their intent to unionize, and both companies voluntarily recognized the unions.
At Discourse, 23 workers unionized with Milwaukee Area Service and Hospitality Workers Organization, or MASH, which also helped Anodyne Coffee workers unionize last year. Anodyne, which was acquired by Fairwave Holdings in 2023, challenged the union vote.
Discourse chose a different approach: “There’s no point in building a company if it doesn’t serve people who work in it every day,” founder and CEO Ryan Castelaz told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Over 70% of workers signed union authorization cards. Voluntary recognition means the two parties can now move forward to contract negotiations without the need for a vote. “Workers formed a union here at Discourse Coffee to have a voice and a seat at the table to protect what they love about their work and this company,” Peter Rickman, president of MASH, told WUWM.
In California, workers at Cat & Cloud sent a letter to the company’s owners last week informing them of their intent to unionize. Two days later, they received word that the company would voluntarily recognize the union.
Nakoa Shoemaker, a barista and organizer, told Lookout Santa Cruz that the union would cover 70 workers at Cat & Cloud’s four locations. In a statement on Instagram, the union said that workers have raised concerns with management about issues such as low pay—in a county with some of the highest living costs in the country—poor scheduling practices, and a lack of communication from leaders.
“We want to make space to openly talk about these issues, and have Cat & Cloud meet us with transparency and respect,” the union wrote.
“I foresee this being an amazing opportunity to continue to do things that we’ve already and always attempted to do, which is to create the best working experience ever,” Cat & Cloud co-founder and CEO Jared Truby told Lookout Santa Cruz. “It’s not a me-versus-you or an us-versus-them thing. That’s the worst thing that could be possible for our culture.”
Meanwhile, organizers at Kaldi’s Coffee announced a boycott of the specialty chain’s newest location on the campus of Washington University in Missouri in a bid to pressure the company to recognize their union. In November, workers at eight Kaldi’s cafes in St. Louis announced their intent to unionize. One location held its election in January, but the National Labor Relations Board has yet to certify the results after several ballots were challenged.
Organizers said the boycott would continue until Kaldi’s voluntarily recognized the union. “We’re asking you as our community to leverage every ounce of power that you’ve got to make sure when [Kaldi’s] can’t give us consistent hours and fair pay, that they don’t invest the money in opening a whole new store; make it make sense,” barista Aliyah Wilcox said at a town hall event on Washington University’s campus.
Kaldi’s declined St. Louis Business Journal’s request for comment, but said in a statement: “Kaldi’s respects our team members’ rights under federal law to discuss working conditions and make their own choices about union representation. Any decision on unionization is theirs to make. Any claim of a final result is premature, as the NLRB has not yet certified the results of January’s election.”
