Common Ground: Helping workers become owners

BRED’s ability to pair our local relationships and connections with a streamlined process for accessing and deploying capital lets us move quickly when new opportunities for worker ownership arise. In July of 2023, for instance, the workers at a longtime neighborhood coffee spot, Common Ground Bakery Cafe—some of whom had been busy organizing a staff union—found themselves abruptly out of a job when the owner of the business decided to shutter the thriving location with no notice. By the end of August, BRED’s team had helped the workers put together a successful conversion bid, and the cafe reopened its doors as a worker cooperative to a torrent of community support by the middle of September.

Learn more:

The Real News Network: After beloved Baltimore coffee shop abruptly closed, workers reopen as co-op

WMAR 2: Common Ground celebrates 1 year as a cooperative business

In These Times: The Baristas Who Took Over Their Café

Baltimore Magazine: Hampden’s Common Ground Bakery Cafe is Reopening as a Worker-Owned Co-Op

Baltimore Fishbowl: Common Ground coffee shop’s worker-owner model is uncommonly grounded

Baltimore Banner: Hampden’s Common Ground cafe to reopen as worker-owned cooperative