Workers Are Trying to Buy Portland’s Shoofly Vegan Bakery After Walking Out | Eater Portland

"A popular wholesale vegan bakery founded in 2016 and known as a reliable source of vegan pastries for many Portland coffee shops — including Guilder, Stumptown Coffee, Case Study Coffee, and Caffe Umbria — the business is particularly renowned for its giant vegan cinnamon rolls, pecan sticky buns, and savory and sweet hand pies in offbeat flavors like vegan cheesesteak; its 11th Avenue cafe opened in 2021. After the original owner left in February 2025 following a careful search for a successor, the bakery’s new owner took over and, in the three months since, staff report major operational changes and growing dissatisfaction. The primary motive for the May 2 walkout was delayed paychecks: nine workers say pay was first delayed on April 18 with no notice, some received checks as late as April 21, and when workers had not received pay on the morning of May 2, the 12 bakers and baristas working that day made the unanimous decision to walk out (a decision later ratified by the rest of the employees); workers later returned to find the locks had been changed, and employees report that some received pay on May 3 or May 4, and some as late as May 5. The owner acknowledged the delayed paychecks in an April 21 email to employees reviewed by Eater Portland, saying, “I just wanted to reach out to apologize to those affected by the late paycheck this past week. I want to assure you that this will never happen again. I’m updating the process to make sure this issue doesn’t happen again.” Workers also describe ambitious-but-unfinished management plans: staffers say the owner purchased an additional fridge and several panini machines to add panini service to lunch but the service never launched — “He bought us a whole bunch of expensive equipment for it, but we didn’t have any staffing to support actually doing that, so it’s all just been kind of sitting there going to waste,” says Michael Barr-Brainard, a wholesale baker — and that proposals to add evening service similarly never materialized. Employees further allege the owner threatened to completely cut the wholesale program, a move that would lay off most bakers; shortly after the walkout the owner emailed wholesale clients saying the bakery was ending wholesale operations, a development that alarmed staff because the wholesale program is both the business’s core and the main way many Portlanders access its pastries. In response, workers point to strong community support and organized relief efforts: “We’ve had a huge outpouring of support from our wholesale partners,” says Justin Hillsmith, a baker acting as the workers’ media contact, and the bakery’s wholesale supervisor, Kelley Bayles, started a GoFundMe to compensate lost wages and potentially purchase the business or start a worker-owned wholesale bakery; as of May 9 the fundraiser had reached nearly $10,000. Workers also launched an Instagram page, @workers_for_shoofly, to coordinate fundraising and outreach and scheduled two fundraisers — a bake sale and cake silent auction at vegan cafe Memento Mori from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday, May 10, and another at the worker-owned bar Worker’s Tap from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Sunday, May 11. On May 7 workers say they briefly met with the owner about a possible purchase and that he “basically asked us for a number,” says Hillsmith; workers are currently preparing an offer because, as Hillsmith puts it, “We want to continue having the community that we’ve always had.” “We just want to keep us baking together,” he adds. “I love my coworkers and I want to keep doing what we’re doing, and not let what Shannon spent nine years doing fade into irrelevance.”" - Katherine Chew Hamilton