On Thursday, Oct. 16, several Claremont and national labor organizing groups held a teach-in at the Motley Coffeehouse in response to Pomona College’s Café 47 switching their supplier from Peet’s Coffee to Starbucks Coffee.
The teach-in, titled “Why Starbucks?” promoted a petition to remove the corporation from Claremont campuses alongside nationwide anti-Starbucks movements, and encouraged the boycott of Café 47 and other Starbucks-supplied establishments across the 7Cs.
According to barista Celeste Gram PZ ’28, Café 47 has experienced progressively slowing business since transitioning to Starbucks. Gram speculated this shift is a response to students feeling “uncomfortable supporting a big business like that, and so they’re choosing to go to other cafes on campus now.”
Just after 7 p.m. last Thursday, Claremont Student Worker Alliance (CSWA) representative Jamen Trojcak PO ’29 addressed the teach-in’s crowd of approximately 50 people. He began by outlining the contentious circumstances under which Starbucks arrived at Pomona.
“This was without democratic action or consultation with students,” Trojcak said. “This is really important, because Pomona made a commitment of shared governance.”
“This was without democratic action or consultation with students,” Trojcak said. “This is really important, because Pomona made a commitment of shared governance.”
Pomona introduced their 2025-26 Shared Governance Initiative last spring. They launched the initiative’s task force, guided and moderated by David Maxwell from the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges.
“The initiative will examine the current state of shared governance at the College, identify areas for improved clarity, communication and collaboration, and develop recommendations to support a more transparent and inclusive governance culture,” according to the “Purpose and Goals” section on Pomona’s website.
Trojcak stated that beyond just Starbucks, CSWA and the other organizations protest its owner, Nestle. He named “prison labor,” “direct investments in illegal Israeli settlements,” “child slavery” and “environmental destruction” as the company’s particularly problematic practices.
“Basically every awful thing that you could expect a multinational, mega corporation to do, they’ve done,” Trojcak said.
CSWA and other Claremont groups are supporting the student-led national campaign Students Against Starbucks in solidarity with Starbucks Workers United (SBWU), a union comprising more than 12,000 baristas at over 600 stores across the country.
Trojcak referenced prior CSWA campaigns against Starbucks at the 7Cs, as Harvey Mudd College and Claremont Graduate University cafes also sell Starbucks products.
“We ultimately suspended our campaign when the Starbucks union got back into negotiations,” he said. “However, [negotiations] never materialized. So now, with this new contract with Starbucks coming on to Pomona, we have a renewed opportunity in order to get a campaign to truly kick them off of the campus.”
The contract, according to Trojcak, is renewed annually but can be canceled at any time. If the community “makes it costly enough for them [Pomona],” the establishment will be forced to change its coffee provider.
Daniela Zepeda SC ’27, who presented on behalf of the Motley, said locating and collaborating with more ethical suppliers is easy.
“I was the product manager last year, so I ordered a lot of the coffee,” she said. “That was like my day-to-day job. We use Klatch. They’re a local — literally a couple miles away — family owned business. They follow the direct coffee trade model and actually pay more than fair trade minimums, buying straight from farmers.”
Zepeda said in an interview with TSL that she “could definitely see” Café 47 and all 7C eateries implementing similar sustainable practices.
The event also featured union barista Shabazz Khan, who worked at the USC Village Starbucks. Khan said the store used to be crowded every morning; management constantly told staff that this Starbucks was the second busiest in California.
However, after Starbucks sued SBWU for copyright infringement following the union’s October 2023 statement supporting Palestine, boycotting made the once popular store increasingly vacant.
“Suddenly, we actually had time where we could stand around and clean and actually talk to each other every once in a while,” Khan said. “Student organizing is something that works … It can sometimes feel a lot like you’re just kind of staying home and doing nothing. But we do feel it on our end. You do actually have the capability to hurt these companies.”
Gram, a Café 47 employee since September 2024, said that morning shifts last spring, before the transition, had “crazy rushes” where “we would get lines that were almost going out the door.”
This fall, Gram is working mornings again but without the typical hustle and bustle.
“I haven’t seen a line out the door, or as long as it was last year,” she said. “We definitely have fewer customers and there have been days when there’s almost nobody.”
In the week following the “Why Starbucks?” teach-in, Gram estimated that only “six customers between the hours of eight and nine on Monday [Oct. 20]” came in for coffee. She said these numbers are unusually low, even for this school year.
Although she doesn’t support Starbucks, Gram said decreased foot traffic at Café 47 is “disheartening, especially because so much of what drew me to this job was the social aspect and making people’s days better.”
Gram remains committed to working at Café 47, but is burdened by a moral dilemma.
“It’s hard to see people feeling guilty about getting the products I’m serving them, and to feel a little guilty about that myself,” she said.
Teach-in speakers encouraged students to sign a petition against Starbucks, and to patron consortium cafes without Starbucks products, such as the Claremont Colleges Library cafe, Pitzer College’s Pit-Stop Cafe, Claremont McKenna College’s The Hub Grill and Scripps College’s the Motley.
“It’s really important that we get as many signatures on [the petition] as possible,” Trojcak said. “It doesn’t have to be just students. It can be anyone … This is so important because we’re submitting this petition in line with other schools [that are] part of Students Against Starbucks in November.”
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