This Wednesday, workers at Anodyne will vote on forming a union. This comes a little over a month after workers publicly launched their union drive, with 100% of workers signing union authorization cards.
But the story of its unionization effort uncovers a nationwide coffee conglomerate, a private equity portfolio that includes roofing services and sports camps, and a barrage of firings that drove its workers to band together now — or be picked off one by one.
A local coffee shop, owned by a coffee conglomerate, managed by a private equity firm
Anodyne was founded in 1999 by Lacee Perry and her husband, Matt McClutchy. Over the next 24 years, the two built the company out to a local institution offering coffee, pizza and live events across four locations.
But in 2023, the two were ready to seek a new chapter and sold the company to FairWave Specialty Coffee Collective, a coffee conglomerate based in Kansas City, Missouri. FairWave manages 11 brands across the United States. Anodyne is its only Milwaukee-based brand, but other brands can be found in places like Minneapolis, Kansas City and Baltimore.
FairWave itself is owned by Great Range Capital, a private equity firm also based in the Kansas City area. Its active portfolio includes companies in the coffee industry, sports camps, beauty supplies and IT disposal services.
Dr. John Heywood is a professor and director of the Graduate Program in Human Resources and Labor Relations at UW-Milwaukee. He explains why a private equity firm might have such a diverse range of assets.
“It’s an investment strategy that involves buying and managing private companies or taking a public company … buying them out and taking it private,” Heywood says, adding that the goal is to cut costs and sell the business again at a markup. “So private equity is really the process of buying and selling firms.”
WUWM reached out to FairWave to clarify its relationship with Great Range Capital. A spokesperson sent information about FairWave itself, but the relationship was not clarified.
Changes begin: cold brew, pizza, staff turnover
A few months after the sale in 2023, things at Anodyne began to change. Nat Otto, the coffee lead at Anodyne’s Wauwatosa location, said customers began to notice changes when Anodyne’s popular blend of cold brew was replaced by FairWave’s product.
“We started getting our cold brew from Kansas City … and immediately customers took notice to how different it was,” Otto says.
Next to go was Anodyne’s pizza, sold out of its Bay View location. Otto notes, though, that from a portfolio management perspective, “the pizza was never really a super profitable thing, it was a passion project for Lacey.”
Still, customers noticed. And these customers had ideas about what could be done.
“Customers at that time kinda mentioned that we should unionize,” Otto says.
But what customers didn’t see was a significant dock in starting pay for baristas handed down from Kansas City, and a string of firings behind the scenes. Immediately after the sale, Syd Vinyard, a coffee lead at Anodyne, says FairWave wanted to dock starting pay by 20%. After some pushback, they’d get their wish.
“The starting wage is now $12 an hour, when it used to be you were hired at $14, and once you got bar trained you were making $15 an hour plus tips,” Vinyard says.
And then came the firings. Vinyard says at least three managers were fired or walked out, including one manager who was replaced immediately without a public job posting. Vinyard notes that these managers were often fired soon after pushing back against FairWave over starting pay or micromanagement of cafe operations from afar.
“It got me thinking … if they just start to replace us with people they hired that they can give the FairWave version of Anodyne to, then they won’t have someone questioning every move they make. It’ll be easier for them,” Vinyard says.
After manager after manager was fired or walked out over disagreements with FairWave, Vinyard says there was a palpable feeling that anyone could be next.
“Things were tense. It felt like they don’t care about us, but we care about each other and our customers, so what is there to do?” Vinyard says. “I was talking with a coworker one day after work, and I was just like, ‘What if we formed a union?’”
The coworker immediately agreed, and the organizing began.
Vinyard and their coworkers had to move quickly and quietly. They contacted a representative from the Milwaukee Area Service and Hospitality Workers Union, or MASH, which also represents workers in the Deer District. MASH, Vinyard, Otto and other Anodyne workers met secretly over several months, bringing a few more workers on board with each meeting.
On April 14, Anodyne workers went public, demanding that FairWave recognize their union voluntarily, as 94% of workers had signed union authorization cards — a document signed by an individual worker authorizing the union to bargain on their behalf. Days after going public, 100% of workers had signed union cards.
FairWave declined to voluntarily recognize the union. A FairWave spokesperson said in a statement to WUWM that “we believe the most fair and inclusive way to determine our path forward is a secret ballot election, ensuring every team member's voice is heard privately. The election will take place in a few weeks, and we will respect and support the outcome of this democratic process.”
What happens next
The “secret ballot election” FairWave refers to is a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) election. This election is a set date and time when workers vote on whether to unionize. The NLRB is a federal agency that oversees this process. Anodyne’s election date is set for May 21.
If a majority of workers do not vote in favor of the union, the employer is not obligated to recognize the union.
If a majority of workers vote in favor of a union, then the process of bargaining over a contract begins. Dr. Heywood explains that this process is often more difficult than forming a union in the first place.
“Often it doesn’t even happen, in which case you may have ... won an election but ultimately you don’t have a unionized workplace,” Heywood says. “This is because the employer opposes the union and tries to stop that first contract from happening.”
This is what happened when workers at the Colectivo coffee chain voted in favor of unionization. It took nearly three years between launching a union drive and successfully agreeing to a collectively bargained contract.
What does it mean to be a local coffee shop?
Anodyne has earned a local reputation that has kept customers coming back for over two decades, in part because regulars like Dave Maass, see it as their neighborhood's gathering place.
Maass has visited Anodyne’s Bay View location for over a decade. He sees it as his “water cooler” after retirement, referring to a place for keeping up with his community.
However, Maass says he’s seen things change since 2023 when the company was sold to FairWave.
“From the initial owners who were curating this thing as a work of art, it became a sponge out of which someone was squeezing money,” Maass says.
Still, Maass sees his neighborhood's Anodyne location as his go-to local coffee shop. The sense of community remains in the customers and staff, even if he says some of the original charm has worn off.
“Young mothers bring their babies here when their house is too messy [to host] their in-laws. I see engaged couples … and those are just sweet moments for people,” Maass says. “I just saw that young couple, they now have a baby that can walk.”
“It’s good stuff. It’s life,” he says.
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