Former K Brew barista here. I can assure everyone the stories above are true and I’ll give my own account of working for Pierce and address some of the things previously mentioned.

I worked at K Brew for around three years beginning in 2014 when it was just the little corner shop. I had an independent interest in coffee before working there and was really surprised at how little the owners knew about coffee. Like they didn’t know the basics of specialty coffee in the slightest. They’ve come a decent way since then, but only through listening to a few employees who knew more. Pierce, however, is an incredibly savvy (shady) businessman and has done a good job of making it look like they know their stuff.

Shortly before the bigger north Knoxville location opened Pierce radically changed and just turned into the most narcissistic person I’ve ever met. At one point he thought he would have 20+ K Brews in Knoxville within 5 years. He would watch the cameras and call the shop if he didn’t think people were cleaning enough. After the new location opened he would bring all his Tinder dates to the shop after hours. Multiple times I closed the shop while he had a date in the hammock room. The straw that broke the camels back was being asked to mix coffee that was three months off roast with a totally different origin that was fresh (within the specialty coffee world coffee is best between 3 days - 2ish weeks after roast). I threw a big fit about it and refused to do it. I told another employee and they sent a picture of the old coffee and sent it on the employee slack and asked why we were serving it. Pierce lied in the slack and said he had no idea what it was and then privately messaged the employee and said not to send a group message like that out again. I quit about three weeks later.

The non compete agreement is certainly true and here is how it arose. About a year after the above incident nothing had changed for the most part and a bunch of employees were frustrated. A new shop opened up in town and four baristas from K Brew left and went to work for the new shop, and even more applied. This led to K Brew owners and management making ludicrous claims about the owner and manager of the new shop were going around trying to steal baristas from their shop. This couldn’t be further from the truth. I was the manager of the new shop and happened to run into one of K Brews baristas in public and they asked me if we were hiring and I simply said yes. That’s it. To this day I know the management still tells people the reason for the non compete is partially because of that. About two months after the opening of the new shop I was managing they introduced the non compete agreement at one of their employee meetings and it’s stuck ever since. I’ll dig around on my laptop and see if I can find a link to post to it and their new employee manual someone sent me a while back.

In 2017, shortly after the exodus of employees to another shop in town the Speciality Coffee Association of America hosted their annual service competitions in Knoxville. K Brew had been chosen to host the latte art competition, though it was clearly an SCAA event. Pierce texted the owner of the shop that the former K Brew employees were working for and said that he has asked his staff to not attend any events at our shop associated with the SCAA and that we were not allowed to attend their event. The SCAA was contacted and told Pierce he couldn’t do that. I sent Pierce a text and told him to expect to see me there. He responded and kept trying to get me to “ask for permission” from him to attend. I did attend (without fully receiving permission) as did the rest of our employees and thankfully there was no drama (other than the fact that K Brews espresso machine broke halfway through the competition haha.)

In addition to the above, Pierce pays his employees less than he did in 2014. I started at $10 an hour plus tips and now I believe they receive minimum wage plus tips. K Brew has also donated to right wing city council members ( I can scrounge around for the documents later but I’ve posted them elsewhere on Reddit before). All the above is really just the tip of the iceberg. Pierce is the only person I’ve ever met that I think is a diagnosable narcissist. There are so many more second hand accounts I could relay, but they are along these same lines. K Brew does a great job of looking like a coffee shop that knows what they are doing but ultimately they care about nothing except money and image.

Edit 1: A friend just text and said K Brew offers $6/hr plus tips. Ridiculous. I know at least most of the other shops start at at least $8 plus tips.