Anti-capitalist café in Toronto, famous for letting customers pay what they like, goes bust

[ThatRobGuy]

Anti-capitalist cafe famous for letting customers pay what they like goes bust

The Anarchist Cafe in Toronto will close at the end of May

www.independent.co.uk

Owner Gabriel Sims-Fewer cites lack of seed capital as one of the primary reasons for the failure.

I was gonna say that the combination of letting people take stuff for free while having signage and messaging that many find off-putting (thereby all but ensuring that your establishment is only frequented by freeloaders and drifters) would've been the likely culprit...but what do I know, I've never owned a coffee shop.

Although, the lack of seed capital part seems a tad ironic. I guess that would be a tough sales pitch when trying to raise capital...telling all of the people who have the kind of money that they could afford to invest in your startup that they're "colonialist scum".


The Anarchist opened in March of last year with a goal of making third-wave, specialty coffee drinks accessible to working-class and poor people. The cafe offered pay-what-you-can drip coffee alongside a range of lattes, teas and pastries. It also carried radical books, prints, and merchandise. People were not required to make a purchase at the café to use its restroom facilities or rest in the space.

But he did leave his Instagram followers with a message of unity and hope: (the word isn't "to heck with" obviously, I can't use the real language here)
“<to heck with> the rich,” he wrote. “<to heck with> the police. <to heck with> the state. <to heck with> the colonial death camp we call ‘Canada.’”

The entrepreneur had also made social media posts where he apologized for the fact that he is a “white, cisgender”, and another where he said “the queen was <not a nice word> and should have died sooner,”


Seems like this business owner needs to get a little perspective here... How far left on the spectrum do you have to be in order to hold the view that Canada, of all places, is some sort of "right-wing Colonial death camp"? And in Toronto none the less (which many ranking lists rank in the top 10 or top 20 in terms of most progressive cities in the world). It'd be like a person living in Midland, TX looking around and saying "this place is just too darn liberal"

 

[durangodawood]

Dumb but harmless anticapitalist fails at capitalism.

Im not sure whats to learn from exploring this in any depth.

 

[ThatRobGuy]

Dumb but harmless anticapitalist fails at capitalism.

Im not sure whats to learn from exploring this in any depth.

This isn't the first time a business has "felt the sting" of their own ideology so to speak.

Another coffee shop in Philly (Mina's World) ended up having to close under somewhat similar circumstances.

And another high profile example would be the fiasco at The Young Turks, where they tried to unionize against Cenk and that situation got messy as well

Inside the union campaign that roiled left-wing network The Young Turks

Progressive firebrand Cenk Uygur, the CEO, put intense pressure on staffers not to unionize.

www.politico.com

I think it more highlights how certain ideologies have the propensity to "go off the rails".

People tend to only discuss this concept with regards to the right (for example, how far-right has the ability to morph into alt-right). For instance, a subset of the right viewing guys like Mitt Romney as "quite conservative/republican frontrunner" in 2012 to "No conservative enough/Not a real republican" by 2018.

Likewise, this appears to be happening on the left for the past few years.

Where, a person like this guy, ends up viewing Toronto, Canada as a "right wing colonial death camp"

Employees and activists viewing a place like "Mina's" (which was explicitly founded on the principles of LGBT inclusion and providing free food to people who couldn't afford to pay) as "not left leaning enough" because the owner refused to relinquish full ownership and make it a total collective with the employees

Employees working for The Young Turks and Kickstarter (two quite progressive orgs) wanting to unionize against the business owners to get an equity share, and even Bernie Sanders own campaign fell victim to a little bit of this.


This particular coffee shop owner wasn't an outlier in his viewpoints. He was self-proclaimed "anti-fascist/antifa" (a semantically overloaded designation that means a lot more than just being against fascism) a movement that has public support numbers that would indicate that while it may not be "majority", it certainly more than "the fringe" as certain viewpoints seem to be gaining some momentum

(12% saying they have a "very negative view" of capitalism)

I think history serves as a great teacher. Rewind the clock a bit and go back to Germany in the lead-up to ww2. The original Antifa/Anti-capitalist movement (that the modern movements are derived from, they still use the same flags and symbolism)

...started as "opposing the right wing" and "opposing fascism" in 1928, but by 1933, they had expanded their definition to include the "Social Democrats" (the Bernie Sanders's of the world) calling them "social fascists" and attacking them.


I think these examples are highlighting a case of history repeating itself a bit.

When organizations and political entities that are explicitly progressive, cater exclusively to socially progressive values, and go from "ally" to "not left-wing enough" (and we've seen some progressive mayors fall victim to this), that's not a confidence inspiring trend. I don't think either political party has a healthy future if the goal is to constantly outflank 80% of their their base in order to be considered "good enough"

 

[Nithavela]

In my city, we have a cafe that has a similiar policy. There are three different price ranges, one for people with little money, one for people with normal money and one for people with surplus money. The people paying the surplus prices basically pick up part of the tab for the poorer customers. They also carry leftist literature, have regular discussion evenings and are active in the left and antifa scene.

That cafe has been a fixture of my town for over three decades.

 

[ThatRobGuy]

In my city, we have a cafe that has a similiar policy. There are three different price ranges, one for people with little money, one for people with normal money and one for people with surplus money. The people paying the surplus prices basically pick up part of the tab for the poorer customers. They also carry leftist literature, have regular discussion evenings and are active in the left and antifa scene.

That cafe has been a fixture of my town for over three decades.

Logistics questions aside (like how do they know how much money you have and what's to stop a person from just claiming they're poor to get a better price)

Is there a name of this cafe that we could look up to see which ways they're similar and dissimilar to the one in Canada that went belly up? I'd be curious as to if the owner was making the same types of inflammatory comments as the one in this story.

It sounds like the Cafe you're talking about has "we still need wealthy people to feel welcome here" as part of their business model (as you said, the people paying the high prices are the ones footing the bill for the have-nots).

So I can't imagine the coffee shop you're talking about is saying things like "bleep the rich" "glad the Queen is dead" and "This country is a colonial death camp"

It'd be a hard sell to tell someone "hey, do you mind paying an extra couple bucks for your coffee so that guy over there who just called you fascist scum can get a discount on his?"


And I'm actually kinda surprised a business owner in Germany (your profile says Germany, but not sure if that's where you still live) would be openly claim to be part of the Antifa scene, as Germany is one of the few countries that still has Antifa designated as an extremist organization that's monitored.

 

[durangodawood]

This isn't the first time a business has "felt the sting" of their own ideology so to speak.

Another coffee shop in Philly (Mina's World) ended up having to close under somewhat similar circumstances.

And another high profile example would be the fiasco at The Young Turks, where they tried to unionize against Cenk and that situation got messy as well

Inside the union campaign that roiled left-wing network The Young Turks

Progressive firebrand Cenk Uygur, the CEO, put intense pressure on staffers not to unionize.

www.politico.com

I think it more highlights how certain ideologies have the propensity to "go off the rails".

People tend to only discuss this concept with regards to the right (for example, how far-right has the ability to morph into alt-right). For instance, a subset of the right viewing guys like Mitt Romney as "quite conservative/republican frontrunner" in 2012 to "No conservative enough/Not a real republican" by 2018.

Likewise, this appears to be happening on the left for the past few years.

Where, a person like this guy, ends up viewing Toronto, Canada as a "right wing colonial death camp"

Employees and activists viewing a place like "Mina's" (which was explicitly founded on the principles of LGBT inclusion and providing free food to people who couldn't afford to pay) as "not left leaning enough" because the owner refused to relinquish full ownership and make it a total collective with the employees

Employees working for The Young Turks and Kickstarter (two quite progressive orgs) wanting to unionize against the business owners to get an equity share, and even Bernie Sanders own campaign fell victim to a little bit of this.


This particular coffee shop owner wasn't an outlier in his viewpoints. He was self-proclaimed "anti-fascist/antifa" (a semantically overloaded designation that means a lot more than just being against fascism) a movement that has public support numbers that would indicate that while it may not be "majority", it certainly more than "the fringe" as certain viewpoints seem to be gaining some momentum
View attachment 331176
(12% saying they have a "very negative view" of capitalism)

I think history serves as a great teacher. Rewind the clock a bit and go back to Germany in the lead-up to ww2. The original Antifa/Anti-capitalist movement (that the modern movements are derived from, they still use the same flags and symbolism)
View attachment 331177

...started as "opposing the right wing" and "opposing fascism" in 1928, but by 1933, they had expanded their definition to include the "Social Democrats" (the Bernie Sanders's of the world) calling them "social fascists" and attacking them.


I think these examples are highlighting a case of history repeating itself a bit.

When organizations and political entities that are explicitly progressive, cater exclusively to socially progressive values, and go from "ally" to "not left-wing enough" (and we've seen some progressive mayors fall victim to this), that's not a confidence inspiring trend. I don't think either political party has a healthy future if the goal is to constantly outflank 80% of their their base in order to be considered "good enough"

No. Some wacky coffee shops are not "history repeating itself". There's always been some wacky far left coffee shops/bookstore/etc in big cities.

You seem desperate to find some kind of right/left parity in contemporary extremism. But I look around and weird socialist coffee shops dont quite counterbalance "replacement theory" right wingers shooting up grocery stores, malls, and walmarts.

Im old enough to remember when leftist ideology truly did go off the rails in non-trivial ways. We had a violent leftist courthouse hostage situation right where I grew up. There were bombings in the US and, if I recall, Germany by weird left groups. Heck, the Soviet Union was still tyrannizing its people to get state communism to work. But that was then. These days in the US massive bombings of federal facilities, violent mobs attacking the US Capitol, racist mass shooters - thats mainly the fruits of right wing ideology.

As for actual anti-capitalism, right or wrong, we're going to see a lot more of it as wealth trickles (gushes) upward and below median people struggle to save a dime or find a stable place to live.

 

[Nithavela]

Logistics questions aside (like how do they know how much money you have and what's to stop a person from just claiming they're poor to get a better price)

Is there a name of this cafe that we could look up to see which ways they're similar and dissimilar to the one in Canada that went belly up? I'd be curious as to if the owner was making the same types of inflammatory comments as the one in this story.

It sounds like the Cafe you're talking about has "we still need wealthy people to feel welcome here" as part of their business model (as you said, the people paying the high prices are the ones footing the bill for the have-nots).

So I can't imagine the coffee shop you're talking about is saying things like "bleep the rich" "glad the Queen is dead" and "This country is a colonial death camp"

It'd be a hard sell to tell someone "hey, do you mind paying an extra couple bucks for your coffee so that guy over there who just called you fascist scum can get a discount on his?"


And I'm actually kinda surprised a business owner in Germany (your profile says Germany, but not sure if that's where you still live) would be openly claim to be part of the Antifa scene, as Germany is one of the few countries that still has Antifa designated as an extremist organization that's monitored.

I think they just trust people by their word. According to their menu (I've been there a couple of times), not enough people pick the cheap option who would be entitled to get it. Also, they have a strong support of the local student and neighbourhood community, and even their low-range prices are at a range that don't cost them money. I guess that they just bank on people coming in when they are poor students and then staying loyal costumers once they get a job and are willing to pay a bit more. They definetely want everyone to feel welcome there, unless they are overtly far-right.

I don't want to doxx myself by stating the name of my city. It is in germany, though. Also, they don't have a website or social media presence I know of, neither to advertise their business nor to post such nonsense. They seem to be too busy actually working to get into twitter wars against no-one in particular.

I think that they have been able to survive as long as they did because they make solid business decision, offer good service and value for their products and generally make people welcome and happy to go there.

On a side note, the "pay a bit extra so someone in need can get something for free or for cheaper" thing is nothing new and not something that always ends in disaster.

Caffè sospeso - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/12/17/460001377/movement-to-pay-it-forward-with-a-cup-of-coffee-spills-into-u-s

 

[Arcangl86]

50% of restaurants fail within the first year. Yet oddly enough that's never pointed out as a failure of capitalism.

 

[ThatRobGuy]

I think that they have been able to survive as long as they did because they make solid business decision, offer good service and value for their products and generally make people welcome and happy to go there.

That's probably the big one then... and being welcoming doesn't necessarily mean having to be 100% politically neutral.

For me personally, I'm a lot less likely to find something off-putting if it's a "Pro our side" message rather than an "Attack the other side" message.
(regardless of whether or not I personally agree with the business owner)


People can celebrate and tout what they see as the benefits of their own position all day long and if they have a good product/service, I'll happily shop at their place of business. The moment it becomes a "you're evil/stupid/scum if you don't agree with me" is the moment I would take my business elsewhere.

In some ideological facets, a person (depending on where the live) may be able to use such incendiary rhetoric and have it not hurt their business, due to the fact that some ideological conflicts don't have a economic component or a linear trend based on income level. IE: you can find both rich and poor people (and everything in between) who span the spectrum on topics like gun control, healthcare, feminism, LGBT issues, etc...

A postmodern hardcore feminist with a "men are pigs" or "dismantle the patriarchy" sign in the window could still make a go of it, as there are still people with money who are sympathetic to that message.

However, on the topic of "anti-capitalism/communism", there's a definite linear trend between how much money a person has, and how much less likely they are to be sympathetic to your cause. Thereby making it extremely tough to be a successful "anti-capitalist entrepreneur" as ripping on people who have expendable income is tantamount to career suicide.

 

[ThatRobGuy]

No. Some wacky coffee shops are not "history repeating itself". There's always been some wacky far left coffee shops/bookstore/etc in big cities.

You seem desperate to find some kind of right/left parity in contemporary extremism. But I look around and weird socialist coffee shops dont quite counterbalance "replacement theory" right wingers shooting up grocery stores, malls, and walmarts.

Im old enough to remember when leftist ideology truly did go off the rails in non-trivial ways. We had a violent leftist courthouse hostage situation right where I grew up. There were bombings in the US and, if I recall, Germany by weird left groups. Heck, the Soviet Union was still tyrannizing its people to get state communism to work. But that was then. These days in the US massive bombings of federal facilities, violent mobs attacking the US Capitol, racist mass shooters - thats mainly the fruits of right wing ideology.

As for actual anti-capitalism, right or wrong, we're going to see a lot more of it as wealth trickles (gushes) upward and below median people struggle to save a dime or find a stable place to live.

Actually, wacky coffee shops just highlight the problematic mindset.

The counterpart to the right-wing things you describe would be Antifa setting things on fire and vandalizing buildings, and left-wing activists taking over blocks of a major city, armed, and declaring it an "autonomous zone" like the Chaz/Chop situation.


...but the point of my thread wasn't to draw some sort of left/right "feature parity"...gun to my head (pun intended), I'd say that the extremism of the right is worse in recent times.

It was to highlight the flawed mindset of the "anti-capitalist" movement, which is based on the erroneous assumption that "if I think XYZ is wrong, that must mean the polar opposite position is right"

And we see this flawed mindset employed on a variety of issues.

 

[friend of]

Shocker. Whomever had that bright idea should be the leader of communist states the world over.