Livelihoods in Coffee Episode #3: The Business Case of Living Wage
Update: Episode recorded on Thursday, July 15 2021.
Join us for a new session in the Livelihoods in Coffee webinar series, this Thursday, July 15.
Livelihoods in Coffee is an ongoing conversation within our community. Do you own a business? Or are you wondering how to start a conversation with your organization/company around living wage/living salary? Join the third episode of this series where we will be joined by Shaheen Hashmat from the Living Wage Foundation UK to explore reasons — economical, social, and many more — why it makes perfect sense as a business to commit to paying employees a living wage. We will also be joined by Leon Grodski Barrera, Co-Owner of Little Waves Coffee Roasters, and Jimson Bienenstock, President and Co-Owner of HotBlack Coffee. Leon and Jimson have advocated for the living wage/ living salary in their own businesses, and are able to support Shaheen’s case with real-life coffee business examples.
About Shaheen Hashmat
Shaheen joined the Living Wage Foundation in January 2020 and leads on the Global Living Wage Initiative, a project established in response to growing international efforts to reduce inequality and address in-work poverty. She previously worked for Girls Not Brides: The Global Partnership to End Child Marriage, Save the Children International, and the British Pregnancy Advisory Service. Shaheen has also been an independent campaigner against forced marriage in the UK for the last ten years.
About Leon Grodski Barrera
Leon co-owns Little Waves Coffee Roasters and Cocoa Cinnamon, three companion retail coffee shops in Durham, North Carolina with his wife, Areli Barrera Grodski. Leon loves the flavor and connectivity of coffee, the precision of craft and the openness of coffee's effect on people. He believes that it creates ongoing occasions to touch upon wonder and create #rootedreverberations as one buys, sells, recruits, nourishes, and connects to local and world communities. Leon and Areli run their business as a continual challenge to connect quality and impact, business and an artistic setting and world view, sustainability with creating opportunities for a wide variety of people to feel seen and nourished.
About Jimson Bienenstock
Born in England and growing up in Canada, Jimson has been an innovative entrepreneur in Hospitality for over 30 years - focusing on best-in-class concepts. His philosophy is that in Hospitality we are primarily vehicles for human interaction, focusing on quality of service - successful only when led by complementary teams of truly caring and and genuinely empathetic people.
After graduating from Cambridge University with a Masters in Biology, he travelled the globe as a project manager in heavy industry, before finding his passion in Hospitality in France while studying to learn French at the Sorbonne University. Over the next 15 years in France, he set up a dozen different bars and restaurants, learning coffee & espresso the old-school astringent Parisian way, and completed his bilingual English & French executiveMBA at Essec Business School in France. He had a coffee epiphany moment trying a truly amazing cortado by barista Momiji Kishi in Toronto. With their shared caring human-led philosophy, simple & minimalist passion for food, beverage and of course coffee - they set up the first HotBlack Coffee in 2015, and now run three in Toronto, opening two of them during the pandemic period.
Join the Conversation
Join us on Thursdays through July at 8am PDT / 4pm BST for live conversations with coffee professionals and living wage experts from around the world. Click the links below to register for each session on GoToWebinar. We look forward to seeing you online!
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