Blue Bottle Coffee employees at four East Bay locations paused the flow of lattes and cold brews on June 17 to announce their intent to join a nationwide independent union, powered by super-majority support among workers.
East Bay employees say that out of a desire for a “livable wage, guaranteed scheduling, and affordable healthcare,” they’ve been talking about the importance of organizing since 2020. They were inspired by Starbucks Workers United, which is now comprised of over 570 stores and 11,000 workers. Blue Bottle is owned by Nestlé, the largest publicly traded food corporation in the world.
In May 2024, six Massachusetts locations of Blue Bottle, which was founded in the Bay Area, voted to unionize as part of the Blue Bottle Independent Union. Shortly after, workers in the Bay kicked off their own BBIU card-collecting campaign.
After East Bay workers had organized their way to super-majority support, they gave management until June 21 to voluntarily recognize their union—and have been met with silence. Or, in the eyes of many of the organizing workers, something worse.
The day after the announcement, management fired one of the employees who had helped to read their demands. W.C. Morse location assistant manager BB Young, a goofy customer favorite who had worked for the company for four years, had arrived a few minutes late to their shift a few weeks prior.
“The date of my nine-minute tardy happened to be on June 5,” Young told 48hills in an email. “If they were so adamant on letting me go, why was nothing done then? I think they wanted to use me as an example. We read [the announcement of workers’ intent to unionization] on June 17, and I was swiftly fired at 5:38am the next day.”
In response, their coworkers organized picket lines at the four East Bay locations on June 21. A GoFundMe has been started to support Young during their unemployment, which is a particularly frustrating blow to a Black queer worker during Pride month.
Blue Bottle had not responded to 48hills’ request for comment on Young’s termination or the organizing drive at the time this article went to press.
Given the company’s scrappy beginnings, one might think it would be more receptive to the concerns of low-wage workers. Today’s Blue Bottle Bay Area baristas start at $20.07 an hour.
Those familiar with company lore know that the third wave coffee brand was started by part-time clarinetist James Freeman out of a Temescal district potting shed in Oakland.
“Clarinetists don’t accumulate a lot of wealth, so I put in all of the money I had, plus a couple credit cards,” Freeman once told CNBC. He managed to open up his first to-go kiosk in 2006 on Linden Street in San Francisco, and the brand quickly became an object of local adoration, with lines that stretched down the Hayes Valley alleyway.
Today, Blue Bottle has over 70 U.S. locations, and opened its first international coffee shop in 2015 in Tokyo, powered by its distinct aura of Bay Area gourmet chic. Though in 2017, reports say that Nestlé acquired a 68% ownership stake in the company for $425 million, locations across the country continue to hawk “Hayes Valley Espresso” blends.
“I’m just a working-class person,” Blue Bottle downtown Berkeley shift leader Alex Reyes tells 48hills in a phone interview. “I’ve worked construction, I’ve worked in a warehouse, those are dangerous jobs. Working at a cafe, I can relax, have some consistency, and be with like-minded people.”
Reyes has worked at East Bay Blue Bottle locations for eight years, starting the year before the company’s majority ownership was acquired by Nestlé. Though at the time, Nestlé announced that Blue Bottle would continue to function as its own entity, Reyes says that some changes at the shops he’s worked at have been evident.
“There were some slow changes, and then there were some immediate punches to the gut for people who had been at the company long term. We used to get nice bonuses.” The year after Nestlé entered the picture, “it was just ‘sorry to announce that we’re not doing bonuses anymore.’ Lots of people really relied on them, they expected them,” says Reyes.
That’s not the only change Reyes noticed. The off-site facility where baristas received job training was shut down, and its trainers let go—an issue compounded by the fact that the four East Bay locations share just two managers, making communication and training complex.
“I’m a shift lead, I balance so many things. Training people in a rush is hard to do, nearly impossible,” says Reyes. “The cafes are run funny—but not in a good way, like in a bad way.”
The changes led Bay Area Blue Bottle employees to reach out to several national unions before a IWW organizer linked them to East Coast Blue Bottle workers in the middle of their own organizing campaign. Just like that, the budding BBIU efforts stretched coast to coast.
“This always has been a union town,” says Reyes. “Lots of organizers would come into the cafe, we would chat with them on the side. We’ve always had customer support.”
If you’re big into the brand’s coffee, you’d be well-served by supporting BBIU organizing efforts. Another post-Nestlé change—besides the bizarre New Balance crossover—that seems anathema to Blue Bottle’s joe-obsessed reputation is that even the quality of its coffee seems to have suffered.
“They’ve definitely gone with much cheaper products. Customers, they can see a difference, some of these old heads,” says Reyes.
Nestlé is hardly known for its commitment to high quality coffee—unless you’re the type who loves the instant crystals of its stalwart Nescafe brand. In the hopes of building solidarity across the corporation’s coffee empire, East Coast BBIU workers have announced plans to connect employees at the corporation’s Bugalagrande, Colombia factory.
“It takes a lot of being there for your fellow workers,” says Reyes when asked about getting the union effort off the ground. “Of course you’re building trust behind the bar, you’re working with people for 40 hours a week! We do have these connections with each other, when something goes down, we’re there for each other. That trust helped build the union too, the solidarity.”
“I want my fellow baristas to not come to me and complain about how they have to work seven other jobs just to make end meet,” says Young “I want my team to be given adequate amount of hours and benefits! I want some real change, because I as much as it was a hellscape working there, I love the community,” says Young. “Something has to give and I hope they are listening now.”
Love getting your coffee from fairly compensated workers? Sign the petition in support of Bay Area Blue Bottle employees here.
