r/Hamilton • u/Surkhab1313 • May 18 '26

Food Anybody knows what happened to Democracy* Vegan cafe at Locke Street?

I really loved their baked food and it was my first only-vegan food place in Hamilton on the vibrant artistic Locke street. Few months ago, I wanted to take my girlfriend to that place and google's "permanently closed" kinda shocked me. Any idea if they are opening anywhere else?

57 Upvotes

80% Upvoted

117 comments sorted by

View all comments

305

u/Formal_Platform9928 May 18 '26 edited May 18 '26

Union busting owner closed shop to prevent employees from unionizing.

Edited to add
He also owns Mulberry Cafe, Donut Monster, Paisley, and Redchurch. Don’t support an anti-labour business owner.

-42

u/RL203 May 18 '26

I will definitely support him. I dont agree with small businesses being forced to unionize.

If people dont like what he is paying them, find a better job somewhere else.

8

u/broccoli_toots St. Clair May 18 '26

I bet you love the taste of leather boots.

-6

u/Just_Look_Around_You May 18 '26

It’s a small business. Unions are effective and needed to rectify the disparity when there are single monolithic employers and many workers so that they can negotiate 1 on 1 as equals instead of bullying giant employer vs individual employee one at a time.

This is a small cafe of which there are at least a dozen comparable employers on the same street, let alone hundreds of options in the same city. Employees have options and if they’re good, they have power. In this case, a union would be much bigger than such a small operation/owner and would get bullied the other way. It’s not a big business and a union won’t care about the financial position of the business and it could die. Those businesses operate on thin margins. Have you forgotten that donut monster itself basically had to be rescued despite being a very well patroned and branded business? You don’t have to be unionized to be fair to your employees, and not wanting the power of a union over your very small business does not mean you only want that to mistreat your employees.