Georgetown cat cafe owner proud to reopen under unionized status; workers wait at bargaining table
Georgetown cat cafe Crumbs & Whiskers recently reopened its doors following a brief closure under a new status as the first unionized cat cafe in the United States. But employees say their issues have yet to be resolved.
Crumbs & Whiskers owner Zari Ruhi, also known as Kanchan Singh, opened the M Street location of her business in 2019. Ruhi also owns a location in Los Angeles and previously owned a location on O Street in D.C.’s Georgetown neighborhood, which has since shut down.
“I’m happy to have my employees have a voice in whichever way they choose, whether it’s directly talking to me, whether it’s to a union, whether it’s both,” Ruhi said. “We’re honored to be the first unionized cat cafe in the world.”
But unionized employees at the cafe said their needs still aren’t being met by Ruhi and management.
Maddy Hanson is an assistant manager and union member at Crumbs & Whiskers. She said staff had originally pushed to unionize due to issues involving inconsistent work hours, pay and staff safety concerns among other things.
“Some weeks we were working, you know, open to close, 60 hours a week, and then the next week, we were only being scheduled for 12 hours, so there was no consistency there,” Hanson said. “There was a big push to cut down on the number of people that were working at the same time, which in our cafe, is a very unsafe thing.”
Ruhi tells WTOP the cafe has always offered competitive pay and additional raises to staff members. She also said she’s added additional team members to staff to help with employee work-life balance.
On Jan. 11, Hanson, along with six other employees, sent a letter to Ruhi requesting she voluntarily recognize the union. Ruhi said when she first received the letter, she was dealing with personal health issues, prompting her to ask for additional time.
According to posts on the union’s Instagram page, Ruhi was granted a two-week extension to make a decision on voluntarily recognizing the union. When employees still had not seen a response from Ruhi by Jan. 23, they chose to officially file a petition for an election with the National Labor Relations Board to be represented by Workers United.
A temporary closure
Around a month after the union formed, Ruhi made the decision to temporarily close the cafe in early February, citing the need to hire more management.
“Our current manager at the time resigned, and we scrambled to bring in new management, but because we had rushed the process, that didn’t work out,” Ruhi said.
“With the new managers not working out, and a couple things that happened internally with management, that’s when we were like, OK, we just need to close the store and find new management.”
The cafe officially reopened on March 21 under new management and with the addition of a vet tech on staff, according to Ruhi. But Hanson said she and other employees were confused why the closure happened in the first place.
“At the time, we had three assistant store managers who were perfectly capable of running the store. We had an adequate number of employees,” Hanson said.
“These big decisions were being made by one person and none of the employees who have made this company successful and have helped find homes for 3,000 cats, their input was not being taken into consideration.”
Current union efforts
Hanson said, due to some employees leaving, only four workers are currently unionized at the Georgetown location. She claims that since reopening, there are unfair labor practices being used to dissuade union members from moving forward with bargaining.
“The four employees, who are a part of Workers United, we have all lost a lot of our hours, and we feel as if those hours are being allocated elsewhere to the new hires who were not a part of the union and to the new management,” Hanson said.
“We were told by some of management that this was done as a way to kind of scare us out of our jobs.”
Hanson said she has not been in contact with Ruhi since the night before their union election on March 2, but remains “ready to bargain in good faith and go to the table.”
Ruhi told WTOP that the M Street location has a new team lead who is versed in unions. They will start within the next week, saying she’s “making progress toward being able to successfully and compliantly work with the union.”