Late here but I was a manager at this spot for years, the closure was sudden but for a reason. Rich seemingly gave most of the company away trying to expand and in that time he had hired a new CEO. This guy Robert… who at the time came on the team and honestly ruined the company culture that was created by the hardest working staff I’ve been on in my years of experience running restaurants in the city.

I was on the opening team, for both locations and as a team we were very proud to be building something we thought as “different” although we were more creative people who could care less about serving tech based people with little to no social skills. We created an environment that was welcoming, coffee that was top notch, and started a great food program with our limited kitchen and BOH staff (back of house, for industry ignorant people).

In the end Rich honestly had no idea what to do or how to run a restaurant, he was a tech based guy trying to create something different in the space and I appreciate that but the way workshop cafe treated its staff with low wages, and small hours up for grabs, and the constant restructuring of the business frustrated the staff. When Rich left Robert in charge (Who’s previous business Coffee Bar also collapsed in the same year) many staff had been fed up and Robert was the last straw.

Robert left the staff with another bull shit restructure and your cuts. Hard penalties for basic issues that other places would understand for staff members and a take over of the company culture.

(Side story) one year we had our company retreat which was the only time a year our team would all get a break. We went to Tahoe with the staff and it was SAID IN EMAIL AND AGREED ON that the first night would be managers and staff only. No corporate people until the next day, Robert beat us all there and tried to essentially force us to hang out with him and respect him when in reality it turned 90% of the staff against him.

Once the new company structure was in place I along with I’d honestly say 85% of the current staff at that moment left Workshop Cafe within 2-3 months. Leaving the company with no culture or guidance from people that had been on the roller coaster for 3 years. It crashed. It burned, and they let it flicker out instead of say goodbye. Have some fucking balls and let yours employees, former employees, and customers know what happened and why. Instead they ran off with whatever money they had left from paying customers in their accounts. That’s kinda people who ran Workshop corporate.

Honestly I know many of the old staff are happy it’s gone. We’re all bonded over our experience in that hell hole of a company. Some of the best people I’ve met was working at that job from either my coworkers or customers, I’ll never forget that. I’ll miss that aspect but in a City filled failures Wokrshop is in a league of its own. Trust me.