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Welcome to Beanchain Coffee!

Updated: Jun 17

We wanted to take a moment to give people some insight into what we are and why we care! The Beanchain is a labor of love and an expression of hope! We want to see a world without poverty and are committed to designing a path towards that with our worker directed model serving as a bridge towards worker ownership and local ownership for businesses.


We’re still early in our journey, but we’re building something meant to last—a blueprint for how local businesses can thrive without relying on exploitative practices or outside control. Whether it's through team-based decision-making, our mutual accountability agreements, or our commitment to living wages, we’re constantly refining tools that any business could use to move toward a more just and democratic future. Beanchain is an experiment in hope—and we’re honored to share that hope with our community.


The Beanchain Network is our long-term strategy for growth without compromise. Rather than franchising or centralizing control, the Network will act as a nonprofit support system that provides essential tools, training, and shared services to future Beanchain locations. This structure allows each shop to remain locally and worker-owned while benefiting from the collective wisdom, resources, and stability of a broader ecosystem. It’s how we plan to scale impact—not by diluting our values, but by strengthening the foundation that makes community-rooted ownership possible.

In this blog

In this blog we'll be exploring and documenting our ongoing efforts to fight poverty in America and beyond. We believe that cooperative philosophies, democracy, communication, and building the tools to support these efforts will be the beating heart of the mission to build an economy that can allow all those within it to thrive! We'll be working tirelessly to build education concerning cooperatives and the tools that can support them. We'll never stop working to change culture so that workers, producers, owners(members), and communities can work together for all of their collective best interest. We'll keep building cooperatives and the ecosystem needed to support their growth. We want to build something better for you, for us, for our kids. We can do so much better.



🌱 WHO IS BEANCHAIN?


Beanchain Coffee is a worker-directed coffee shop and incubator for democratic business practices, located in Mesa, Arizona. It is embracing worker cooperative principles and attempting to build a model that can serve as a bridge for other companies to use to move towards worker ownership and worker cooperative models. With the larger goal of building a Cooperative Network that can allow for scaling while ensuring local worker ownership.


🧭 MISSION & PURPOSE


✨ Mission:

To build fair, worker-directed coffee shops that serve their communities.


💡 Core Purpose:

To create and refine the tools and practices that allow small businesses to transition into worker-owned cooperatives, establishing a replicable blueprint for ethical and sustainable workplaces.


🧠 VALUES & PRINCIPLES


Core Values:

  • Good Faith

  • Love

  • Fairness


Alignment with Cooperative Principles:

Beanchain incorporates the 7 cooperative principles:

  1. Voluntary and open membership

  2. Democratic member control

  3. Member economic participation

  4. Autonomy and independence

  5. Education, training, and information

  6. Cooperation among cooperatives

  7. Concern for community


🛠️ STRUCTURE & GOVERNANCE


Worker-Directed Model Features:

  • Casual Voting: Workers help make decisions about the shop

  • Open Forums: Transparent dialogue and debate

  • Team-Based Incentives: Extra pay for those contributing to admin and strategy

  • Path to Ownership: Apprenticeship model leading to full membership


Role Lifecycle:

  1. Worker (Barista): Entry-level with benefits and responsibilities

  2. Apprentice: Voluntarily enters mentorship under a Founder or Member

  3. Member: Gains full voting, profit sharing, and administrative rights

  4. Founder: Early builder with temporary veto rights and long-term profit share


🤝 CO-WORKER AGREEMENTS & ACCOUNTABILITY


All team members sign the Co-Worker Mutual Agreement, which includes:

  • Operating in good faith

  • Performing duties using defined checklists

  • Giving and receiving respectful feedback

  • Being on time and accountable for shifts

  • Welcoming customers and educating them about the shop

  • Avoiding gossip, bigotry, threats, or violence


Accountability Systems:

  • Solution-Seeking Process: Structured issue resolution path with limits

  • Performance Reviews: Every 2 months, rated across the values of the agreement


💰 WAGES, BENEFITS, & PROFIT SHARING

  • Living Wage Commitment: Goal of $21/hr + tips in Mesa, AZ

  • Healthcare: 50% premium assistance

  • Profit Sharing: Among Members and Founders

  • Wage Postponement Option: With 5% annual interest for financial flexibility

  • Retirement Plans: In development for Members


🧑🤝🧑 CULTURE & COMMUNITY


Beanchain blends cooperative principles with an atmosphere of warmth and care.


In-Shop Offerings:

  • Free co-working space and high-speed Wi-Fi

  • Private and conference rooms (free for community/anti-poverty work)

  • Community-curated library

  • Marketplace for local vendors

  • Free events and educational workshops


Communication Platform:

  • Discord Server: Join here to stay connected


🌐 THE BEANCHAIN NETWORK


Long-Term Vision:

  • A nonprofit-supported network of locally worker-owned Beanchain locations

  • A scalable alternative to franchising that preserves autonomy and mission


Cooperative Incubation:

Beanchain supports the creation and growth of other co-ops:

  • Beanchain Music Coop

  • Baristers

  • The Solution Seeking Company

  • Beanchain Marketing Cooperative (formed from Beanchain’s in-house marketing team)


Welcome to Beanchain Coffee!

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