The barista unionization wave continues sweeping through Philly with Local 80′s biggest coffee shop yet

Local 80, Philly’s nascent food-service union, may have more members soon: Workers at Bluestone Lane’s three Philadelphia shops have filed a petition to unionize with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Earlier this week, staffers sent a letter to Nick Stone, the CEO of the national coffee chain, asking for voluntary recognition of their union.

There are 28 workers employed between the three stores at 1701 Locust St., 2000 Walnut St., and 1717 Arch St., according to Lucas Fender, an organizer and union representative for Philadelphia Joint Board Workers United, of which Local 80 is an affiliate. The union asked the NLRB for an April 27 election date if it is not voluntarily recognized by Bluestone Lane’s owners.

Bluestone Lane did not reply to requests for comment. The Australian-inspired cafe chain was launched in 2013 by Stone, a Melbourne native and former Wall Street banker who found Manhattan’s coffee scene too rich in corporate shops. Stone pitched his cafe as one focused more on human connection than coffee. “We are about facilitating the most pure definition of hospitality, which is human-to-human contact through engaging and sincere service,” the company website says. “Our locals might come in to Bluestone Lane for a coffee, but what they take away is a feeling.”

Bluestone opened 20 locations within its first four years. Its Rittenhouse Square store, opened in 2015, was its first cafe outside of New York City. It has since expanded to more than 60 stores throughout California, Texas, New Jersey, Washington, D.C., Virginia, Tennessee, and Massachusetts. The company is privately owned and has more 1,000 employees companywide.

This will be the first time that Local 80 represents employees from a company of this size, as well as one with out-of-town owners. (Unionized Starbucks workers are represented by Workers United.) It’s an exciting prospect for the two-year-old local, Fender said.

“All workers and baristas in cafes across Philadelphia deserve a union and deserve to be part of the movement that so many of the workers that Elixr, Ultimo, Vibrant, and ReAnimator have started,” he said, outlining the small business-based unions Local 80 currently represents, the largest of which has six locations.

Fender points to one overarching commonality between those outfits and Bluestone Lane: “All of those workers ... make these cafes function. They all have to live in the same city of Philadelphia, and they have to pay the same bills.”

Local 80 has notched big wins and losses in the past year. In September, workers at Good Karma Cafe voted to decertify their union. Days later, Philly’s first-ever independently owned union shop, Korshak Bagels, shuttered, followed weeks later by eeva, the city’s first independently owned union restaurant. Local 80 gained new members in November, when Vibrant Coffee Roasters workers voted to unionize, then lost some in January, when two of Ultimo’s four locations decertified their unions.

The script flipped come winter, when Local 80 helped workers at Elixr, ReAnimator, and Ultimo settle on first contracts with their respective employers, each time after strike authorizations. The three first contracts, settled individually, included hourly base rates of $13.75, $14, and $14, respectively, plus paid time off, health benefits, and more.

The favorable terms of those contracts caught the attention of employees at Bluestone Lane, who approached Local 80 about unionizing in late December. “[We were] just trying to get some information and see what we could do to better our jobs and better the jobs of our co-workers,” says service professional Trista Mayo, who’s worked at Bluestone’s Walnut Street location full-time for the last year.

Mayo and others spent the past few months filling in their co-workers, gauging interest and answering questions. Employees wanted more information at the Locust and Arch street locations, which have seen more turnover than the Walnut Street shop, workers said. But the staff at Bluestone’s Walnut Street location — which was without heat for roughly a month between January and February — were on board immediately.

“We were working in freezing cold conditions every day and losing customers and therefore losing money because of that, on top of an already-low hourly pay,” said Joey Schulman, who has been a service professional at that location for seven months. It’s not the only infrastructure issue that has cut into their work and their pay, Mayo said. She and Schulman said they have served customers — waiting on tables, making drinks, serving food — during numerous power and internet outages.

“We were just told to keep things going,” Mayo said. “There’s been no ‘We will reimburse you for the hours that you lost tips,’ or anything like that.”

Sylvia Brookins, currently kitchen manager of the Walnut Street location, started at Bluestone Lane six years ago, at one of its California locations. Her take on the company is nuanced. “For me, personally, it’s a great brand and a great place to work for,” she said. “It’s just, at the Philadelphia locations, our stores have been going through management changes and there’s no consistency.”

Brookins described working solo in the kitchen during a Saturday shift which brought in $5,000 in sales, with a lone dishwasher struggling to work quickly enough to supply front-of-house with clean silverware. “We don’t have the supplies we need,” she said, citing one of several persistent problems she hopes to see addressed. She also alleged that back of house has been routinely understaffed, and that management is often absent during intense weekend shifts.

Pay is also an issue. For Bluestone Lane’s front-of-house staff, who perform tasks like waiting tables and making drinks, “our base rate is $7.25 an hour,” Mayo said. While tips can boost their wages, Bluestone Lane’s front-of-house staff doesn’t receive a guaranteed tipped rate, in which a company supplements an employee’s paycheck if averaged tips don’t accrue a higher hourly minimum. (Baristas at Elixr and ReAnimator have guaranteed tipped rates of $20 an hour, while Ultimo workers have a guaranteed tipped rate of $7 more than their hourly base rate.) Back-of-house staff starts at $17.50 an hour, but they are also promised a cut of front-of-house tips, which Brookins and Mayo allege they rarely collect, if ever.

Mayo said the workers currently have a supermajority heading into a potential union vote. While they hope unionization will be a catalyst for better wages, improved working conditions, and consistent support, there is something they treasure about their workplace as is: close ties.

“We love working with each other. We do love the locals that we serve and the relationships that we’ve formed with them,” Schulman said. “If we didn’t care that much, we’d get up and we’d go somewhere else, but we really do care.

“We have a lot of hope for this organizing and a lot of faith in the power of coming together to make these changes for us and for people to come, too,” she said.

As of Wednesday, they had not heard back from Bluestone Lane leadership.