Milk & Honey student workers and Pomona College dining workers gathered as a delegation on Monday, Sept. 21, to demand fair labor practices for both Milk & Honey and full-time union workers from Pomona administrators.
The delegation met at the Coop Fountain before walking to Alexander Hall, where they aimed to deliver a statement and list of demands to Jeff Roth, chief operating officer and treasurer of Pomona. When Roth didn’t meet the group, they spoke with Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of Students Avis Hinkson.
Conceived and run by students, Milk & Honey opened in 2016 after Samuel Lin PO ’20 noticed demand for boba drinks on campus while making his own beverages for friends in the Lyon Court residence hall lounge.
The student-run boba shop, which operates out of Café 47, was notified that Pomona College Dining Services was shutting down its operations on Sept. 10. Five days later, Robinson stated in separate emails to TSL and the Associated Students of Pomona College (ASPC) that Pomona had decided to “reverse the planned closure.”
Dining Services General Manager Jose Martinez emailed Milk & Honey managers on Sept. 16. According to Dora Wang PO ’27, one of four Milk & Honey student co-managers, the email stated that Dining Services can support Milk & Honey for this academic year, and instructed managers to coordinate with Dining Manager Marilyn Mora to plan an opening date and start the process.
“But it [the email] doesn’t have any details on how we were to open,” Wang said. She added that Dining Services had not responded to prior emails from the beginning of the semester requesting logistical information that would be needed for opening.
The managers’ immediate demands include long-term funding for Milk & Honey, guaranteed continuity of employment, maintenance of their existing hours and assurance that Dining Services will work with Milk & Honey managers to establish an “immediate and concrete reopening date.”
The delegation also demanded that Dining Services put an end to retaliation against full-time workers for union activity, and pay workers for the time they spend participating in contract negotiations.
Student workers at Milk & Honey belong to UNITE HERE Local 11, the same union that represents all full-time Pomona dining staff, as well as student workers at Café 47 and the Coop Fountain, both of which are run by Pomona. The planned closure of Milk & Honey came shortly after the union began contract renewal negotiations with Pomona on Sept. 8, the first contract that Milk & Honey workers would be included under since they joined Local 11 in Fall 2024.
“We’ve always been on the same team,” Wang said of full-time and student union workers.
At 10:41 a.m. on Sept. 10, Dining Manager Norma Castillo emailed Milk & Honey student managers requesting an 11:00 a.m. “Extraordinary Meeting.” During that meeting, Dining Services representatives informed the managers that Dining Services would no longer provide financial and logistical support.
According to the meeting notes compiled by Milk & Honey managers, Martinez cited a 50% decrease in sales at Café 47 and the Coop Fountain as a primary reason for closure.
“[Martinez] kept it pretty vague, which is essentially deflecting blame,” Aamanya Sejpal, a student manager at Milk & Honey, said. “Framing it as inevitable, as something they’re not doing willingly, even though it’s definitely a decision and a choice.”
In an interview with TSL on Sept. 21, Robinson said he was not involved in, or previously aware of, the decision to close Milk & Honey. He recalled Milk & Honey’s transition from ASPC funding to Dining Services in 2021, then said funding and budget cuts were not a primary motivation for closing Milk & Honey.
“It loses money, but the money it loses is kind of immaterial, frankly, from what I’ve discovered,” Robinson said. “So we’re going to restart the project.”
Managers recalled that in the meeting, Martinez stated that Milk & Honey would often make more money in three hours than Café 47 would make in 12. He additionally stated that Dining Services, as a nonprofit, loses millions of dollars every year. In an email sent out to the Pomona student body on Sept. 14, ASPC representatives reported that Milk & Honey “consistently recoups their cost of labor, and only required $6,170.45 in supplemental funding from [Dining Services] last year.”
Managers recalled that Martinez emphasized the role of the Students against Starbucks boycott in declining sales, and a resulting need to cut Milk & Honey’s program in order to “prioritize the jobs of the full-time union staff who work at Coop and Café 47.”
Sejpal noted that Martinez’s reference to the union confused the managers present.
“It’s very evidently, in our opinion and the union’s opinion, an attempt to pit student Milk & Honey workers against the full-time union workers, who are actually aligned with us and on our side” she said.
Lina McRoberts PO ’27, a Milk & Honey barista and a Claremont Student Workers Alliance (CSWA) organizer involved in the Students against Starbucks boycott, also condemned framing the closure as the result of financial losses from the boycott.
‘There is nothing inevitable about ‘protecting full-time union workers by cutting student union jobs,’” McRoberts said. “That is a choice that Pomona is making and then laundering as necessity.”
Wang expressed similar concerns, noting that Dining Services and Local 11 began new contract negotiations on Sept. 8.
“I think [Pomona] believes that union negotiations for [Pomona] might be easier to navigate if students do not participate in them,” Wang said.
Although Café 47 and Coop Fountain student workers are also unionized under Local 11, students are hired at the beginning of every semester. In contrast, once a barista is hired at Milk & Honey, they effectively retain their job for the rest of their time at Pomona. Technically, however, all student employees are terminated and rehired at the beginning of each semester.
“I personally believe that the closure decision has more to do with union busting than with profit or community input,” Wang said. “Especially because Coop Fountain didn’t open when they sent out the closure email. So I think since no one was working at the Coop, [closing Milk & Honey] would be effectively removing all students from negotiations.”
During the delegation on Sept. 21, TSL reporters asked Frank Dining Hall custodian Gloria Hernandez whether Milk & Honey’s operations posed a problem for full-time workers, and how she interpreted the claim that the need to prioritize full-time workers motivated Milk & Honey’s closure.
Hernandez said that Milk & Honey posed “no problem at all” to full-time dining employee operations.
After the Sept. 10 meeting, Milk & Honey staff began actively communicating with their union representatives at Local 11. On Sept. 14, Local 11 Lead Organizer Roberto Mazariegos emailed Martinez on behalf of Milk & Honey.
“The closure of Milk & Honey is a unilateral change that impacts the work, income and livelihood of Union members,” Mazariegos wrote. “The Union demands that you cease all changes and submit your proposal to change operations to collective bargaining.”
The following day, on Sept. 15, Robinson informed TSL and ASPC in separate emails that “the College has decided to reverse the planned closure, while we work with students to evaluate a range of options for its long-term future. We look forward to continuing these discussions in the coming weeks and months.”
McRoberts and other Milk & Honey workers said that the closure has given them a deeper understanding of the importance of Milk & Honey’s union membership.
“I think what’s happening now, Pomona Dining all of a sudden being able to cut Milk & Honey, and the union being the one to show up and show how this is illegal … all of a sudden, I think we understand the importance and extent of the power that Milk & Honey has because we are a part of the union,” McRoberts said.
As Milk & Honey student workers continue to advocate for the boba shop’s future, they plan to keep working closely with the union to advocate for the rights of both student workers and full-time workers at Pomona.
“Now … we understand that the union is instrumental in ensuring Milk & Honey’s long-term future and success,” Sejpal said.
Throughout the process of communicating with Local 11 and planning the joint delegation, student workers said they’ve learned more about what the union can provide.
“The current moment is vulnerable, but it also presents a lot of opportunities for change,” Wang said. “And we are trying to seize those opportunities.”
Those opportunities, she said, include pushing against the College’s unilateral decision-making, which Rodriguez similarly condemned in an interview with TSL.
“Any changes in working conditions, including hours, schedule changes or closure, must be negotiated and agreed upon through collective bargaining,” Rodriguez said. “We’re in that process now. But the college didn’t wait for that process; they just did it … A unilateral change is, in the union’s view, illegal.”
Wang and other Milk & Honey baristas are planning to attend union negotiation meetings to advocate for workers’ rights and the long-term stability of Milk & Honey.
Since Milk & Honey baristas are technically terminated and then rehired every semester, Dining Services’ effective termination of all 13 baristas isn’t legally considered a firing.
These 13 baristas rely on Milk & Honey for income, including first-generation and low-income students, which students noted in the delegation.
In response to this legal technicality, Wang and McRoberts plan to attend union negotiations and advocate for adding the practice of recall to the union’s contract with Pomona College. This would ensure that Milk & Honey workers are guaranteed continuous employment.
When asked in an interview with TSL whether Milk & Honey will receive stable funding, Robinson said that the shop will be a “subsidized program.”
“When you say stable funding, that would depend on the students buying the boba, wouldn’t it?” he said. “So I don’t think there will ever be stable funding for that program. It’s probably going to be a subsidized program.”
Martinez’s Sept. 16 email to Milk & Honey managers also said that Dining Services could support the program “for this academic year.”
“Looking ahead, we also intend to work with the student managers to develop mutually agreed-upon criteria for evaluating the program,” Robinson said in a Sept. 17 email to TSL. “This will allow us to consider factors such as student participation, financial sustainability, staffing and the overall value the program provides to the campus community.”
Wang and other Milk & Honey baristas emphasized that the student workers and Pomona have not yet met to discuss Milk & Honey’s future.
“So until we meet with [Pomona] and have a concrete plan of how Milk & Honey’s future is going to look, we are going to be continuing all actions,” Wang said.
In the past two weeks, students across the 5Cs and alumni have mobilized in support of Milk & Honey, signing the official petition to keep it open, which the student managers launched on Sept. 13. At the time this article was first published, the petition had garnered 955 signatures.
Wang also estimated that Milk & Honey had received 20 to 30 direct messages on their Instagram account, from customers sharing memories of the program to expressing support for its reopening, and credited students’ collective efforts as integral to Pomona’s reconsideration of the closure.
“We believe that the decision to reverse the closure of Milk & Honey is a direct response to that support that we’ve had,” Wang said.
Following Pomona’s decision to reverse the closure, ASPC also sought to support the student-run boba business and, on Sept. 17, passed a preliminary resolution, in conjunction with Milk & Honey managers, opposing “Pomona College Dining Services’ unilateral decision-making.” Senators condemned both the closure of Milk & Honey and recent changes to students’ meal plans.
In the resolution, ASPC called for “Dining Services to immediately reopen Milk & Honey in the Fall 2026 semester, acknowledge the harm caused to Milk & Honey’s business by planning its demise and commit to financially supporting the business long term.”
ASPC President Malu Estoducto PO ’27 said ASPC would continue pressing administrators to uphold the college’s shared-governance commitments, urging Pomona to consult students before making official decisions.
ASPC Vice President of Academic Affairs Tendo Lumala PO ’28 said those conversations should have begun before Dining Services decided to withdraw support.
“From a student body perspective, to engage in a decision like this without any consultation of the student body, I think it spits in the face in some ways of the notions of shared governance that have been a large part of administrative discourse over the past year,” Lumala said.
ASPC plans to continue meeting with Milk & Honey’s managers to identify their priorities and advocate for those requests with administrators.
“I want ASPC to help them with what is going to serve them best,” Estoducto said. “So, hearing their complaints and hearing their asks, which is what we will keep doing throughout this process.”
In his Sept. 17 email to TSL, Robinson said that the college is committed to supporting Milk & Honey and working with its student managers.
“The student management team is currently developing its operating plan for this semester and expects to establish a firm opening date within the next three weeks. For context, Milk & Honey began operations on Oct. 7 last academic year,” Robinson said. “We anticipate a schedule generally similar to last year, although the final operating days and hours will be determined in consultation with the Milk & Honey managers.”
Multiple students who regularly visited Milk & Honey said that they hope to see the shop’s continued operation. For Kira Frey SC ’27, regular visits to get boba with her roommate led her to connect with Wang.
“We just built a friendship, kind of, around Milk & Honey,” Frey said.
Frey said she appreciated being able to walk to the boba shop and use her Flex dollars, the dining currency included in students’ meal plans. She often brought textbooks and a laptop to study with friends, but said they frequently spent the time talking instead.
Luke Chakmakian PO ’29 also frequented Milk & Honey, stopping by nearly every Tuesday and Thursday after his choir rehearsals.
“It’s just this space that I know so many people go to just hang out and have a sweet treat,” Chakmakian, who signed the petition opposing the closure, said.
“I’m grateful that they [Pomona] have decided to go back on it [the closure] because I think [Milk & Honey] is really important for the community,” Chakmakian said.
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