The Philz Coffee location at 1110 Ocean Avenue, along with three more locations in California, filed for union elections Tuesday. The Ocean Avenue location employs 13 people; together, the four locations employ about 60 workers.
Before this week’s move, only the Philz location at 1313 Ninth St. in Berkeley was unionized. Employees at the Berkeley Philz began the process in 2024 and are currently negotiating their first contract.
Joining the Philz’s Ocean Avenue location are shops in Glendale, Cupertino, and Torrance. Representatives from UFCW Local 5, which also represents the Berkeley location, said they are already in contact with more stores in California.
The union organizing comes after the coffee chain, which was founded in the Mission District in the early 2000s, sold to private equity firm Freeman Spogli for $145 million last summer. It also comes after the company’s recent decision to remove all flags, including Pride flags, from its stores, which was later reversed after significant backlash from customers and employees. However, UFCW Local 5 said new stores have never been allowed to hang Pride flags or symbols, even after the no-flag policy was reversed.
The SF location was inspired, in part, by the flag debacle.
“It kind of just blindsided everybody and I feel like it really got people talking,” said an employee of the Ocean Avenue location who preferred to remain anonymous. They said once the employees began speaking openly about unionizing with each other, there was always a sense that they’d want the decision to be unanimous among the tight-knit crew. “It was really surprising to find that at least like 80 percent of us basically just jumped on it as soon as we had the opportunity,” they said.
Jim Araby, director of strategic campaigns for UFCW Local 5, said some of the workers’ concerns include pay, scheduling improvement, workplace health and safety, and broader decision making about their working environment (as in, not killing Pride flags, especially ahead of Pride Month).
The San Francisco employee echoed these concerns, especially regarding their sick leave policy, which they say creates a culture of showing up for shifts while sick at the risk of fellow employees and customers; a strict timeliness policy that they say is needlessly punitive if an employee is exactly one minute late; and scheduling concerns.
“I'm not even sure if, internally, they're allowed to give us enough hours to accrue benefits even though that had been floated in front of every one of us during interviews,” they said. “Sometimes, you have weeks where you're getting three hour shifts and you can barely cover rent that month, because they've got a budget for how many hours they're allowed to give you that day.”
The push to unionize at Philz comes amid a broader national labor movement among coffee companies. Workers at Highwire Coffee, La Colombe, Verve Coffee, Cat & Cloud Coffee, and Peerless Coffee have also organized with UFCW, the organization said.
Philz Coffee did not respond before time of publication.
