Quick Take
Verve Coffee Roasters removed a controversial service fee from its cafés Friday after employee backlash, saying it caused confusion for customers. The move comes amid growing worker frustration, as baristas at three locations announced plans this week to unionize, citing low hours, wages and lack of benefits.
Verve Coffee Roasters removed a controversial service fee from its cafés on Friday, following employee backlash.
Sasha Pavy, a shift lead at the Pacific Avenue café in downtown Santa Cruz, said employees arrived on Friday morning and discovered that the button for a surcharge intended to support health benefits for full-time employees had been removed from the point of sale system, and the signs were missing from the area near the register. Management didn’t give staff a notification about the change at first, she said.
A few hours later, workers got an update, said an employee at the Fair Avenue location, who spoke with Lookout on the condition of anonymity to protect their position at the company. Around 10 a.m., Verve regional manager Carrie Swain sent a message on the company’s Slack. “It’s been decided to remove the service charge. If customers ask, it seemed like it caused too much confusion,” read a screenshot of the message the worker sent to Lookout. “The charge has been removed from [payment processing system] Toast and we will be printing new signage.”
A Verve spokesperson confirmed Friday afternoon that the fee has been removed from all of the cafés, but did not reveal the reason. In August, Verve told Lookout that price increases on its beverages are forthcoming due to skyrocketing coffee prices, which have doubled over the past year due to climate disasters in key growing regions, and have been exacerbated by tariffs.
The Santa Cruz-based artisanal coffee company enacted the service fee in early August at 11 coffeehouses statewide to support health benefits for full-time workers, signs posted for customers said. Although it was added automatically to each bill, guests could ask to have the fee removed. But it became a flashpoint when employees at the cafés said that almost none of them had full-time hours, and thus did not receive health benefits from the company, even as they deal with customers upset at the rising cost of their coffee.
“I don’t receive health benefits, and there are no full-time workers at the café I work at,” Pavy told Lookout at the time.
Verve disputed the claim, and said that more than 75% of its retail employees are eligible for health benefits. The company declined to share how many retail employees actually receive health benefits.
Later, the original sign was replaced with a new one that says the fee helps provide “health and other employee benefits for our team members.”
This week, it became clear that some Verve employees had other issues with management in addition to the service fee. On Monday, workers at cafés in Santa Cruz on Pacific Avenue and Fair Avenue, and in San Francisco, notified their managers that they intend to unionize, and said they are seeking to improve working conditions, increase wages and hours, and to gain more respect from the leaders at the company.
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