Mind&Body@Work

Worker Rights and Financial Well-being

Timm Esque Season 1 Episode 15

To learn more about addressing well-being on your team, visit (https://www.evleaderlab.com/well-being).

Our guests are David and Shannon Baxter, Founders of Beanchain, which is both a coffee shop and a long term plan to improve the lives of workers.

David and Shannon have an operating coffee shop and community hub in Mesa Arizona.  But their vision is much bigger.  David suffered from poverty as a teenager and young adult and he is committed creating opportunities so others can achieve financial well-being and without having to experience that suffering.  Shannon also shares her dream of helping people and animals through horse therapies and other methods. 

The current Beanchain store is intended to test a template for worker directed businesses (which can be an interim step to a worker owned cooperative), where centralized services are automated and run through a non profit so that there is more profit to share among the workers as they learn to become the decision makers and direct the business. The next phase they envision is attracting other existing businesses to this model and providing the roadmap for transitioning from privately owned and directed to the Beanchain model. The model can apply to any business, not just coffee shops.

If you are local, come see the atmosphere David and Shannon have created in the center on the NE corner of Alma School and Southern in Mesa, along with their variety of food and drink offerings (e.g. amazing cinnamon roles!). If not, you can learn more about their model and plans online and on social media platforms at bchain.coffee.  David mentioned you can also learn a lot of about worker cooperatives at disco.coop and recommends “Care for Capitalism: Democracy at Work” y Richard Wolf and “Manufacturing Consent” by Noam Chomsky

#mind&body@work, #embodiedleadership, #wagetheft, #beanchain, #workerownedcooperatives