In July 2023, early morning visitors to Baltimore’s Common Ground coffee shop found a sign taped to the door. With a thank you to the Hampden community that had sustained it for 25 years, owner Michael Krupp announced the shop would be ceasing operations “effective immediately.” Common Ground employees released a statement saying they had only been notified themselves the previous afternoon and, notably, had been a few months into forming a union. According to Common Ground barista Nic Koski, the effort was sparked by “general workplace concerns in terms of people wanting more fair, equitable wages, especially between in front of house and back of house, and better treatment — wanting to look into health care and benefits.”
Now out of work, Common Ground’s former staff turned to another idea — buying out the shop and turning it into a worker owned and managed cooperative. The plan moved fast. The Baltimore Roundtable for Economic Democracy (BRED), an organization created to facilitate just those kinds of transitions, offered a loan for the purchase along with assistance managing the technicalities of the changeover. And within two months, Common Ground reopened, with 19 former employees on staff as worker-owners — a welcome surprise for Hampden and workers across the city. “A lot of people already really loved the place, but now I think [they] especially [do] — we have people still coming in being like, ‘Whoa, this is so cool,’” Koski says.” People seem to be very excited about seeing what’s happened here.”
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