Employees at Discourse Coffee Workshop, a coffee company based in Milwaukee, voted to unionize on Friday. The company will recognize the union without a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) election and will soon begin negotiations.
The 23 employees at Discourse are unionizing under Milwaukee Area Service and Hospitality Workers Organization, or MASH. MASH also represents recently unionized workers at Anodyne Coffee and employees in the Deer District.
Discourse was founded in 2017 in Sister Bay, Wisconsin, before moving to Milwaukee in 2021. It currently has two locations in Milwaukee and a residency location in Chicago. Only the Milwaukee-area employees will be covered by the union.
Discourse voluntarily recognized the union after over 70% of employees signed union authorization cards.
Discourse founder and CEO Ryan Castelaz said the company has always kept an open door to employees for feedback and critique. He said voluntarily recognizing the union is a way to put that openness in writing.
“I truly believe everyone will come out on the other side of this with more clarity, more empowerment, more equity and more pride in the place that they work,” Castelaz said. “If our people do better, we do better, the city does better.”
Peter Rickman, president and business manager at MASH, said Discourse workers unionized primarily to ensure that their workplace conditions wouldn’t deteriorate in the future.
“Workers formed a union here at Discourse Coffee to have a voice and a seat at the table to protect what they love about their work and this company,” Rickman said.
Storytelling through coffee and collaboration
Castelaz described the initial Discourse location in Sister Bay as “off the beaten path,” which forced the company to find ways to stand out.
While coffee businesses are often defined by appealing to customers’ routines, Castelaz saw that successful bars and restaurants often sold their story as much as their product. He found success by applying that approach to coffee, utilizing ingredients like activated charcoal, pork fat and smoked orange vanilla in drinks.
“We wanted to ask ‘Are people interested in stories in their coffee, or do they just want a cup to go?’” Castelaz said. “After five years in Door County, we learned people were actually interested in the story.”
Discourse moved to Milwaukee in 2021, and now has two locations in downtown Milwaukee and at Radio Milwaukee. Castelaz said he partnered with Sean Liu around this time, who he credits with taking his storytelling approach into a stable business.
Both Castelaz and Liu had about a decade of barista experience, which Castelaz said deepened their love for the craft and respect for Discourse workers’ reasons for unionizing.
“We did not come from places of money and decide to open a coffee shop ... we worked these jobs, and we know the difficulties that come with them.” Castelaz said. “So as we grow, we want worker welfare and equity to remain core to the mission and vision of our company.”
Milwaukee’s coffee shops have seen unionization efforts before, though not usually with the support of company leadership. In 2021, Colectivo workers voted to unionize in an NLRB election. Their first contract was not finalized for nearly two years as the company challenged election results. Last year, Anodyne workers voted unanimously to unionize with MASH, and are still negotiating their first contract after Anodyne's parent company attempted to decertify the union vote.
Because Discourse leadership opted to voluntarily recognize the union from the start, Rickman said he expects the bargaining process to be quicker this time around.
“The leadership of Discourse Coffee deserves credit for not pursuing an adversarial route ... and addressing this with a sense of mutuality that is far too often missing when employers find that workers want to have a seat at the table,” Rickman said.
Castelaz hopes this can serve as a model for how other businesses engage with their employees.
“For other owners, I would encourage you to see these conversations as mutually beneficial,” Castelaz said. “For us, we are advocates for collaboration between workers and their leaders to create more equitable workplaces beyond just Discourse.”
