Your Barista Doesn't Make a Living Wage

No man can call himself liberal, or radical, or even a conservative advocate of fair play, if his work depends in any way on the unpaid or underpaid labor of women at home, or in the office.

-Gloria Steinem

Yep. I said it in the title and I will say it again, “Your barista doesn’t make a living wage.”

Most people will refute this with, “…but the cafe is so busy, surely with tips its okay?” To which I usually can astutely reply, “Nope.”

I haven’t written about this before out of respect for my employers. I understand how hard it is to run a business. However, I now stand in a place where I am earning a living wage and have healthcare (thanks to my incredibly brilliant employers), and feel comfortable talking about the issue at hand. To start off, the coffee business is brutal. There is very little profit to be found on $3 cups of coffee that cost $2.5 dollars to get to the customer. Without going too deep in details, the business itself is cutthroat and cruel.

Employers are granted legal permission to pay their employees less than minimum wage, with tip compensation accounting for the additional amount. Any well meaning coffee shop will include their bakers, kitchen staff, and busboys in the tip pool as well. This means that the livelihoods of coffeeshop employees relies on a tip pool derived from 1 or 2 dollars on each cup of coffee. Yes, the numbers add up quick, but divided, they disappear.

To top the problem off, many customers do not see the point of ‘tipping a dollar on a 3 dollar cup of coffee’ while they automatically tip on a $5 cup of beer. The amount of training and time spent getting the coffee from the third world countries, roasted, brewed, and served surmounts the beer and wine industry by ten-fold (at least). There is a shorter shelf life. Years of professional barista experience. Time spent learning customer service. Time spend mastering the craft. TIME. So much time. And yet coffee is not given the same value and care.

While the reasons why beget me, and could catapult us down a long and dreary list… my point is that the coffee industry illustrates our systemic problems perfectly. All of the problems trickle down to the moral goodness of the paying customer. Small businesses cannot take on the rent increase, living wage increase, and cost of production alone… and yet their support does not come from the city. Places only stay afloat because businesses are granted permission to cut the labor costs in lieu of customers making up the difference.

It is wrong and inhumane that the person serving your coffee in the morning (who has most likely practiced the art of making coffee for at least 100 hours) relies on whether or not you ‘feel’ like tipping to make their living wages. It’s also wrong that that responsibility falls on you.

I spent a year on work holiday in Australia and experienced what a culture without tipping is like. Waitstaff start at a living minimum wage (think $19/hr to clear tables) and tips are included in the cost of your food. Yes, things are more expensive. Yes, they should be because those costs reflect the cost of the labor, rent, and product that is being handed to you. It FELT incredible to be able to show up to a job knowing that my work in the job supported my life outside of my job.

What now then? To start, continue to tip your baristas as if they were bar tenders. Your favorite barista will leave his/her job inevitably if things don’t start looking up. Next, help us come up with creative solutions to urge our councils to protect small businesses. Sounds simple, right? All we need to do is to come up with creative solutions for supporting the businesses that bring joy to our every days. Maybe this looks like lower rent, or lower taxes, or supplemental income to cover loss through tips… I’m not exactly sure. But we need to give value back to the people whose jobs are taken for granted and undervalued.

I’ve been a barista for 8 years, and I adore my job. I am honored to be on the team of people whose job it is to say hello to strangers and pour them hot cups of coffee. I respect my company immensely for stepping outside of the box and finding ways to give their employees health care and living wages. And lastly, please remember that my job is as important as yours. Maybe you can crunch code, but we make the coffee that gets you through it.