Food service is not an industry that most would associate as a beacon of social or economic justice. In fact, the restaurant industry is notorious for providing paltry wages, for engaging in shocking levels of wage theft, and for generally being comprised of toxic work environments marked by sexual harassment and human trafficking. One of the most interesting models being explored is the worker cooperative: businesses that are owned and run collectively by the workers themselves. Although worker co-ops exist in a wide range of industries in the U.S. — from specialized glass manufacturing to landscaping and more — cooperative restaurants are one of the most common forms of businesses to adopt the co-op model. This is because there is a relatively low barrier to entry to starting a restaurant or a café ­­– they tend to be entrepreneurs’ first toehold in the economy.

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