Employees at Blank Street Coffee, one of the fastest-growing national coffee chains in the country, have moved to form a union across the company’s seven Boston-area locations.
After achieving a super-majority of approval from the roughly 70 employees across the chain’s Boston, Brookline and Cambridge shops, employees delivered a letter Monday to Wendy Johnson, Blank Street’s U.S. director of operations, asking her to voluntarily recognize their effort to organize a union represented by the New England Joint Board of Unite Here.
In an email to GBH News on Monday, Johnson and a representative from the company’s “people team” declined to comment, and would not confirm if the company will voluntarily recognize the union effort.
In a letter delivered to Blank Street’s regional management on Friday, employees expressed their desire to “stand in solidarity” with several Boston-area cafe chains that have successfully formed unions in recent years, including Pavement Coffeehouse and Diesel Cafe. After launching an effort to unionize in 2023, workers at Blank Street’s New York City locations were able to ratify a contract earlier this year.
“As we grow and expand Blank Street into a larger and more complex operation, having the support of a union will ensure workers are protected along the way,” the Boston organizers’ letter says. “It will also attract and retain employees, as well as draw in new business from community members who increasingly want to support the large ongoing coffee workers movement in New England and the rest of the country.”
Blank Street, which began in 2020 as a single coffee cart in Brooklyn, New York, expanded rapidly with dozens of new locations cropping up across New York, Boston, Washington, D.C., and the United Kingdom, buoyed by millions in private equity funding.
The business model emphasizes efficiency: locations are small, online orders are incentivized, and only two or three baristas are scheduled on an average shift. The bulk of the actual coffee-making is performed by a super-automated Eversys espresso machine, designed to create consistent, uniform beverages with the press of a button, so staff can focus on customer service.
But barista Nicole Hill, who has worked at two Blank Street locations over the past year, said the machine-powered ideal doesn’t always play out perfectly in practice, largely because of ongoing technical problems with the machines that employees are not authorized to fix on their own.
“In reality, on the floor, we’re reporting back so many technological issues and concerns and hazards that ultimately are not responded to, are not resolved, and we’re not allowed the agency to resolve it ourselves, despite the responsibility put on us to run the daily operations and make the sales,” Hill said.
Hill remembers one particularly “demoralizing” week of ten-hour shifts at Blank Street’s downtown Boston location back in February: one or two colleagues consistently managed long lines out the door and the constant buzz of online order receipts, while the automated coffee-making machine at the center of the shop’s operation continued to malfunction.
When Hill complained to company management, she says the response was praise for bringing in around $10,000 per day with just three people on staff and a promise to “do better” next year.
“It was the lack of empathy when our feet were hurting, our arms, our legs, everything was hurting,” she said. “It was at that point when we sat down and seriously considered, like guys, we need to unionize. For our safety, for our security, for our wellbeing. We need to do this.”
When the automated coffee system malfunctions, the fix often requires employees to contact their managers or reach out to the Eversys company directly to receive a temporary access code for the machine. Aubri Covington, who has worked at the Blank Street location in South Boston since October of last year, says it happens frequently enough that it’s easier to just do some tasks manually, like steaming milk or prepping simpler drinks.
“It sounds like a great idea, in theory, a robot that does all the work, but it ultimately creates more problems,” Covington said. “As someone who has made coffee with a normal espresso machine, is it easier to not have to pull a shot and tamp it and put it in the machine and push the button? Yes. Would I rather do that than have to text my manager at least twice a day saying that it’s not working? Yes.”
Covington said there have been inconsistent work rules at various locations for things like dress codes, and that workers do not feel like they have much authority to make decisions.
“Because the company is growing so fast, I’m hoping one of the biggest things that comes with this union is just having some organization around set roles for people and fewer miscommunications,” Covington said. “When you work in coffee, you’re a team, and on a team, everyone needs to understand what they’re doing. It makes it really hard when everyone’s just thrown into the mosh pit.”
Emma Delaney, a former barista at Pavement and organizer with NEJB Unite Here who is helping Blank Street baristas to move forward with their effort, says she’s hoping the company will recognize the union and its purpose as a way to give employees a seat at the table.
“When baristas go to unionize, it is not necessarily inherently a bad look on management,” Delaney said. “It’s saying, hey, we work here. We do the ins and outs every single day. We know what it’s like, and we have valid opinions, valid potential answers to fix these issues and we’re just not being heard.”
