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| The strike in Philadelphia is not the first. This is from 2022, captured by Marylu Herrera for www.eater.com |
I’m sitting at a Black Turtle Coffee outlet, located at the corner of 21th Street and Chestnut Street in Philadelphia having a medium black coffee with Bon Jovi’s ‘Bed of Roses’ playing the background. Good coffee, good music, warm and friendly service. And I have to thank Starbucks employees for it.
This is how it happened.
I planned to sit in a coffee shop and write. Looking for a coffee shop with WiFi while driving was a bit tiresome, so I suggested to my sister that she drop me off at a Starbucks outlet. She did. I ordered a small cup of coffee, set up my laptop and started playing some bullet chess online as I usually did before I write.
A few minutes later, I heard an announcement: ‘Sorry guys, we are closing because we are going on strike.’ This was followed by some information regarding alternatives and compensation which I didn’t quite get. But as I was leaving out, I asked one of the employees what the strike was all about.
‘We are severely understaffed for the amount of business that comes through the store in the afternoon,’ I was told. I asked if they are not planning to hire more people and was told, ‘apparently not.’
Further inquiries elicited the following explanation:
‘We are severely understaffed for the amount of business that comes through the store on Thursday afternoons in September due to a buy one get one free deal on fall themed drinks (like the pumpkin spice lattes). Our store was extremely busy last Thursday (9/7) and we had a skeleton crew working. We demanded the mobile orders be turned off at 4 union stores in Philadelphia for the duration of the "Thurs-yays" promotion or else we will walk out at each of those 4 locations.’
Demands not met. Strike on.
I took my coffee outside. Several customers turned up but they were politely informed of the situation. I was still sipping the coffee when another customer turned up. I told her ‘they are on strike.’ She knocked on the glass door anyway, explaining, ‘I want to show love!’ An employee came up to the door, the customer gave a thumbs-up, smiled and walked away.
I first heard about Starbucks in 1996 when my friend Kanishka Goonewardena told me he was meeting a woman he was interested in. Nothing came out of it. I referred to the encounter as ‘Starbucks’ and one day when I asked him ‘what’s happening with Starbucks,’ he replied, ‘all I know is that my bucks are fast disappearing!’ He did tell me something of the humble beginnings in Seattle, but I had forgotten the story.
Today I know that by 1996, there were 1,105 outlets and now there are 35,711 in 80 countries, quite a distance from Seattle’s Pike Place Market there Gerald Baldwin, Gordon Bowker and Zev Siegl set up shop just so that people in the city could have access to ‘the delicious dark-roasted coffee they loved but had to go out of town to find.’
In 1990 Starbucks came out with a mission statement: ‘To establish Starbucks as the premier purveyor of the finest coffee in the world while maintaining our uncompromising principles as we grow.’ This was amended in 2008: ‘to inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time.’
‘Uncompromising principles’ has been dropped. A symptomatic reading is possible: principles had been compromised. They do have some ‘thinking,’ obviously. This is the advert: ‘We are so much more than what we brew. We call our employees partners because we are all partners in shared success. We make sure everything we do is through the lens of humanity—from our commitment to the highest-quality coffee in the world, to the way we engage with our customers and communities to do business responsibly.
The employees are not in agreement though. Starbucks, I learned, consistently and belligerently resist all efforts to unionize. Starbucks close all three outlets in Ithaca, NY, for example. It can’t be a coincidence that they were all unionized. Students of Cornell University insisted, ‘if Starbucks is going to get out of Ithaca, we should get them all the way out; they shouldn’t be profiting off our campus and our community.’ The university announced that Starbucks would not be served in its dining halls. Students in other universities are making the same demand, essentially, ‘allow unionization or leave.’
Daisy Pitkin of Starbucks Workers United who is the field director of the unionisation drive claims that 'Starbucks is doing everything in its power to ignore its unionized workers.’ She notes that Starbucks has to listen to its customers.’
‘We’re calling on customers to join the fight and stand with Starbucks workers on September 14. Our theory is that if every customer who supports unionized Starbucks workers talks to 10 or 20 other customers, then we are building a powerful consumer network that Starbucks can’t ignore.’
So I am still at Black Turtle Coffee, about to get a second cup. It was founded in October 17, 2021, I learned, by Braeden Anderson and Selena Gabrielle bonded by a common love of good coffee. Much like Baldwin, Bowker and Siegl, they set up Black Turtle Coffee in a South Jersey seashore town because they couldn’t find the premium, freshly roasted coffee they had been used to in New York City. It is ‘a woman and Black-owned specialty coffee roastery and cafe based in Brigantine,’ with this lovely, cosy and warm outlet in Philadelphia. They want to ‘share first-class, luxury coffee experiences and make top-grade coffee accessible and affordable for everyone.’
What could be wrong with that? What could go wrong? Well, things can go sour when conversations stop. If Starbucks is about neighbourhood it has to be about conversation. This includes celebration of conversations among and with workers.
I’m showing love here at Black Turtle Coffee. I just spoke with Dalton Soffer, one of the current owners of 'Absecon Capital,' which runs Black Turtle Coffee. Soffer is a former college basketball teammate of Braeden Anderson at Seton Hall University, NJ. And I am showing love to the Starbucks workers who are on strike as I write.
Having a conversation. Being a good neighbor. Showing love.