Hive Café Employee Wages Increased

Espresso Machines Also Replaced

NewsVince Morello — Published October 9, 2017

“We finished this past year, [which] finished in May 2017, with money in the bank, we were in a position to be able to raise those wages,” Leigh Hoffman, the Finance and Admin Coordinator of the Hive Café, said.

In August 2016, cooks had their wages reduced to $12, from $14 an hour. Now they will be paid $13 per hour. Coordinators, which act as the administrators for the café, also saw their salary increase. From Septembre 2016 up until this May, coordinators were paid an average of $16 an hour. Now coordinators will see their wage increase to $16.75 an hour.

“[Coordinators] have a lot of institutional memory and do a lot of the backbone work of running the Hive Café,” Hoffman said.

The cooks wages were increased to reflect the amount of work they do, Hoffman added.

Barista wages were also decreased last year from $12 to $11. This year they will be paid $11.50 per hour.

The Hive Café also purchased two new espresso machines which cost $10,885. Hoffman said that the current espresso machines in use at the downtown and Loyola locations were in disrepair, and in desperate need of replacement.

“We were spending, an exorbitant amount of money on a bi-weekly basis to repair [the espresso machines],” Hoffman said. “So it seemed like a necessary capital investment in order to continue to provide the services we do and make coffee.”

Hoffman added the the Hive Café will be paying for the espresso machines over a five-year period.

The Hive Café is also projecting their budget to break even by the end of the next fiscal year, said Hoffman.

The original version of the story stated that baristas did not receive a wage increase. The Link regrets the error.