Restaurant owners are scrambling, as their business models don’t seem to pay the bills anymore, and the fallout has been hitting some unfortunate workers in the paycheck.
The problem’s not helped when there’s just one person or entity at the top of the restaurant pyramid to navigate these challenges, whom employees must trust implicitly, with zero visibility on what’s going on inside—or when the whole structure might crumble.
***
Brothers, chefs, and biz partners Seth and Zach Pacleb had a better idea. After a decade and a half of co-running farmers market stalls, pop-ups, and catering operations together, they opened Pidgin Cooperative last fall, along with fellow industry pros Erica Reich and Spencer Rossman. Located inside Fishermen’s Terminal in a boaty, industrial area of eastern Magnolia, the worker-owned restaurant and bottle shop brings together the team’s values of collaboration, trust, and financial transparency in a way that could reshape the city’s whole hospitality industry.
Pidgin was built around a radically simple notion. Instead of a traditional hierarchy model—where workers get hourly wages plus tips, while owners make all the decisions and reap the profits, if indeed there are any—the whole staff is invited to be in the founder’s club. On day one, Pidgin employees are paid $25 per hour and given a clear pathway toward becoming co-owners. After 2,000 hours of service (roughly one year of FTE), workers can purchase a membership share for $1,000 that grants them voting rights in the business, visibility on its finances, and access to profit-sharing. They can invest that $1,000 through a payment plan, if they like, and prelim voting rights are unlocked after an initial investment of $200. The model also includes an equal share of the pooled tips for both front-of-house and back-of-house workers. Currently, Seth says, there are six worker-members at Pidgin, and one who’s on track to becoming the seventh.
Add new comment