This is a throw away account for personal protection reasons. But for those of you who don’t know, Dark Horse Espresso Bar has begun firing employees who have spoken out against their new tip pooling policy that began April 27, 2024.

This tip pooling policy takes 17% of the tips that baristas and front of house employees make for serving customers, redistributing them to bakers, upper management, front office, and logistics. All of which are employees already in either salaried positions or making exceptionally more than baristas who start at minimum wage in the company.

Until now this hasn’t been shared very publicly, as it was written in employee contracts that employees would be subjected to pay reparations for “damage to reputation or any losses the company faces due to disparaging remarks”. But now that the unjust firing has begun, it’s about time people know.

It should also be known that there were many attempts by employees to negotiate wages and have the new policy removed. However, corporate felt this was the “right decision”. Due to intense backlash, wages were raised $.75 per hour, which is A) nowhere near what the lost tips include, and B) will be negated once minimum wage increases to $17.20 in October of 2024.

No matter the opinion on “tipping culture” and it being out of hand, I need to point out that unfortunately barista jobs are often a minimum wage position and in places like Toronto, it becomes very difficult to afford to live without relying on tips. With Dark Horse’s new policy, this puts even more pressure on baristas paying out the higher paid employees instead of all employees earning more based on the company’s profits.

Now I am just trying to enlighten the public. It is completely up to you whether you’d like to tip extra next time you stop by, not tip at all, boycott the company altogether, send a very strongly worded email, write a review, or other. Or if you’re not sure how to proceed, stop by one of the locations and ask a manager about the reasoning behind this.

And to our regulars, thanks for always stopping by and supporting us. We still look forward to seeing you.

Edit: Wow I didn’t expect this to blow up so quickly. While people are discussing I’d like to clarify on some things

I’d like to say front of house staff would love for bakers to share in tips. It’s other employees that we believe are already being paid fairly according to the company’s recent job postings, regardless of tips and should not also rely on it.

As for whether the 17% is reasonable or not, I’d say about $200-400 of pay each month so far has been affected. So while 17% doesn’t seem like a lot, it’s a huge loss over time.