Blue Bottle Coffee workers are unionizing in the Bay Area

Staff at four Blue Bottle cafe locations in the East Bay are seeking to unionize, the first in California to join East Coast locations of the Bay Area-founded chain in forming a collective bargaining unit.
Staff at Blue Bottle's Berkeley location and at three Oakland locations — in Old Oakland, on Piedmont Avenue and inside the old W.C Morse building on Broadway — are asking the company to voluntarily recognize the Blue Bottle Independent Union by Friday at noon to commence bargaining. According to the union an 'overwhelming majority' of workers at these locations signed union cards.
In 2024, the Blue Bottle Independent Union first unionized the company's six locations in the greater Boston Area. The push follows recent unionization efforts at national coffee chains Peets and Starbucks locations in California and at Bay Area chain Highwire Coffee.
The Bay Area's high cost of living and Blue Bottle's lack of healthcare benefits led the workers to seek unionization, said Alex Reyes, a Blue Bottle employee for the past 10 years currently working as a shift lead at the Berkeley location.
'We're juggling so many things, like hospitality and keeping customers safe, while management might be jumping from one cafe to another,' Reyes said. 'It's a tall ask.'
Blue Bottle founder James Freeman launched the specialty coffee company in Oakland in 2002, growing to more than 70 U.S. cafes. Giant food conglomerate Nestle bought a majority stake in Blue Bottle in 2017. Reyes claimed there was a noticeable drop in how the company invested in its employees after this purchase, with what he sees as drops in the quality of staff training and product quality.
A representative from Blue Bottle did not immediately respond to the Chronicle.
Blue Bottle has taken progressive stances on issues such as paying coffee producers a fair price for their beans and, temporarily, doing away with single-use containers. Still, getting the company to recognize the union looks like an uphill battle, but Reyes believes there is support to be found among customers.
'We, workers, are the face of the company. We make the product and interact with people from behind the bar,' Reyes said. 'Support will be high when it spreads.'

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