Great Lakes Coffee owners respond: Seek amicable resolution with employees

DETROIT, Feb. 25, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Great Lakes Coffee is a small business that in many ways reflects the American dream. Founded in 1994 by owners who dreamed to bring authentic specialty coffee to Michigan, the company has expanded from one to five locations, employs 40+ people, provides competitive wages and benefits, and serves hundreds of customers daily.

The company launched its first public café space in Midtown Detroit in 2012 at the corner of Woodward and Alexandrine. Over the past 10 years, Great Lakes Coffee Midtown, together with its frontline team of baristas and kitchen staff has become a hub of positive community activity and development. Innumerable relationships have been formed within its walls, countless students have earned degrees while studying within this space, artists have been given a free platform to display their work and multiple businesses and community initiatives have been launched through meetings held over a cup of coffee.

Today, however, we are at a crossroad with a group of employees who have grown dissatisfied with their jobs and the opportunities Great Lakes Coffee provides. We believe their dissatisfaction is based largely upon misinformation and miscommunication between management and frontline staff. We take responsibility for that and we will try very hard to repair these relationships. We want to reach a resolution that is not only acceptable, but amicable, to all.  

At the same time, misinformation is being spread and demands are being made on this company that no small business can sustain. This is especially true on the heels of the Covid pandemic which put many Detroit small businesses out of business, and from which many in the foodservice industry are still reeling.

The facts are that Midtown Café employees receive compensation ranging from $17 to $23/hour including wages and tips. Additionally, full-time and qualified part-time employees are offered company-supplemented group medical insurance plans and receive paid-time-off benefits. Although some employees have expressed concern that they have been overworked, the average Great Lakes Coffee Midtown employee works about 22 hours per week. Our Midtown Café incurred only 12 hours of staff overtime throughout the entirety of 2021. We therefore hope to better understand these concerns as we work through this together.

Allegations that we encouraged sick employees to come to work are simply not true. We understand the fears and challenges that Covid has brought to both frontline staff and business owners. Covid created unprecedented anxiety in the workplace, and therefore we were attempting to act in the best interest of employees and customers alike. We understand that our established policies may not have been fully communicated to staff, this is another area where we'll have to do better in the future.

Despite our business success to date, Great Lakes Coffee is still a small business which like so many other businesses has just come through two years of extraordinarily difficult times. We are not clear of these times yet, so while we fully intend to do everything we can to satisfy our employees, we cannot take unrealistic steps that will in any way jeopardize the business and the sustainability of the jobs it supports. In that situation, nobody wins.

We hope that by working closely with our customers and our employees, we can find our way through this situation and move forward together to continued success. That's the only outcome any of us want or that we can accept for our employees, our customers, and our company.  

Sincerely,
Greg and Lisa Miracle

SOURCE Great Lakes Coffee