Blue Bottle Coffee Settles In Wage Theft Case For Over $1 Million

Oakland, CA (WorkersCompensation.com)- Blue Bottle Coffee, a Nestle-owned coffee company, is expected to pay $1.5 million to former employers for allegedly failing pay its hourly employees overtimes wages or provide them with their required breaks. Back in June 2018, the company was named in a lawsuit that later became class-action status after an ex-employee, Keenan Patterson, filed suit against the company on behalf of non-exempt, hourly workers.  A month after this lawsuit, another former employee, Paige Dunn, filed a similar lawsuit.

In September 2019, a judge merged both cases together and approved the settlement, with the terms set to be finalized in a hearing in Oakland. Blue Bottle has denied any and all allegations in court documents from both of the lawsuits.

In a media release, Blue Bottle’s attorney stated, “While we believe that the company has always complied with California law related to wages and employee breaks, any applicable pay practices were modified more than a year ago. Settling the case was a better option than continuing to litigate, because the settlement results in more money being paid directly to employees, and less to attorneys.”

According to the Dunn lawsuit, court records allege that there was a series of labor violations that formed “a uniform policy and systematic scheme of wage abuse.” The two lawsuits accuse Blue Bottle of forcing employees to work through their required breaks and not paying them any overtime, not reimbursing their workers for business-related expenses, and not paying them full wages or keeping accurate payroll records.

In light of COVID-19, Blue Bottle Coffee has become the largest United States Coffee Chain that has decided to close all of its retail locations temporarily to lessen the spread of the coronavirus.

The complaint estimates that more than  500 people should be receiving compensation when the lawsuits are ultimately settled, as it covers all individuals employed by Blue Bottle in California in an hourly or non-exempt position from June 29, 2014, to March 12, 2019.

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