The Commons Café is located within the Brooklyn Commons, an event space and co-working center near downtown Brooklyn, New York. The current owner of the cafe wants to turn it over to a team of workers who will convert it to a worker-coop. We expect this process to take about six months and are looking for new members to join the current workers and participate in the conversion. We are seeking a diverse staff and strongly encourage low-income residents of the communities surrounding our space at 388 Atlantic Avenue to apply.
Our typical daily tasks include: opening and closing the store, taking orders and waiting on customers, operating the cash register, making coffee and tea drinks, sandwiches and salads, pouring beer and wine, baking pastries, ordering, stocking, managing inventory. We all share in the considerable amount of clean up work.
We seek the usual attributes all organizations look for: reliability and punctuality, capacity for hard work, good communication skills, enthusiasm and talent for interacting with the public, curiosity and eagerness to learn, ability to multi-task and prioritize duties.
A worker coop requires an additional set of attributes: people who are excited about working in a democratically managed workplace and who have the ability and skills necessary to transition into an ownership role; people with the time, energy, and political motivation to make a commitment to growing a cooperative business. We also want to play a role in promoting worker coops in NYC.
We will give priority to candidates who offer any of the particular skills we need:
• Someone who enjoys inventing and crafting high-quality sandwiches, salads & soups, sourcing ingredients, costing out food
• Someone with a good understanding of coffee and/or teas
• Someone with a good understanding of beers and/or wines
• Someone with knowledge of social media who can create and execute marketing plans using our website, newsletters and other promotional technologies
• Someone experienced with collective work environments
All members of the coop must have a New York City Food Handlers Certification. If a candidate does not have one when hired, she or he must get the certificate within thirty days of starting work.
Candidates must have 25+ hours/week of availability. Evening and weekend availability is a requirement, but we’ll work with you to find a schedule that works for all of us.
All workers are initially paid $12/hour plus tips (estimated total $16-18/hour). The workers themselves will decide on wages once the coop is formed, but we expect the initial hourly wage for all members to be $15, which with tips would bring hourly earnings to more than $20. It will be up to the members of the coop to determine further benefits and compensation as the business grows.
Email a letter of interest and a resume to Melissa@thecommonsbrooklyn.org. Tell us why you’re interested in being a worker-owner at the Commons Cafe, and why your skills, talents and interests make you a good candidate for our coop. Interviews will begin immediately and continue until the positions are filled.
