The Tartine Bakery outlet in the Graduate Hotel on Durant Avenue has permanently closed just seven months after it opened.
Employees of Tartine Berkeley got a letter telling them that the Graduate Hotel “has ended their contract with Tartine citing ‘business decline’ and ‘COVID-19,’” according to an Instagram post by tartineunion, a group of employees who have been pushing, with some success, to unionize the bakery’s 150 or so Bay Area employees. They called the news “heartbreaking.”
Aficionados of Tartine’s crusty loaves made from locally milled wholegrain flour will also be heartbroken. They had eagerly anticipated the September opening of the Berkeley bakery as it meant they didn’t have to go into San Francisco to wait in line for bread, coffee and morning buns, teacakes, scones, fruit-filled bars, fudgy chocolate brownies, cookies and tarts.
While Tartine’s bread and cookbooks have brought international recognition to co-founders Elisabeth Prueitt and Chad Robertson, many of their local employees have not been happy with their working conditions. In March, the employees at the three San Francisco locations voted to join International Longshore and Warehouse Union. But the vote was close and is being contested.
Workers at the Berkeley store, however, conducted their own election and voted 18 to 0 to join the union.
The shuttering means that the Berkeley workers have lost their jobs, according to the Instagram post. They had been furloughed because of the shelter-in-place order.
“COVID-19 has been the perfect excuse for employers to upend people’s jobs. Tartine Berkeley staff will not have a place to come back to work. We fought hard for our union because we knew what kind of impact service workers standing up could do for not just us but, for workers everywhere. We want to thank everyone who came out to support the Tartine Berkeley location through fliering, let us speak in your class rooms, and joining us in the street,” workers wrote on Instagram.
The owners of the bakery have not posted any news on their website. It still reads that they are “temporarily closing our Tartine Café.”
Berkeleyside has reached out to Tartine and will update this story as needed.
