Overview: Workplace culture and rebuilding
Contributing Writer Izzy Canizares reports on the internal fallout at Fridley's The Clapping Monkey coffee shop, where a staff walkout triggered by a shift dispute led to layoffs and resignations. The story dives into ex-employees' concerns surrounding workplace leadership, cultural appropriation controversies, and how new management plans to move forward as the business reopens.
Credit: The Clapping Monkey.
A locally owned coffee shop in Fridley is reopening Aug. 29 with new employees after several staffers walked out and were laid off by the owners following months of what ex-employees said was poor leadership, capped by a walkout over an old NES system a week earlier.
The Clapping Monkey opened in 2023, attached to the “Wild Things Collective” antique shop, and is owned by Joshua Larson and David Wenzel. The coffee shop was largely run by queer employees. While the owners were attentive to customers, KP, a former barista who asked to go by his initials due to fear of retaliation, said they barely interacted with staff.
KP said his “disruptive behavior” seemed to be a consistent issue for the owners during his 11 months at the cafe, despite a work ethic noted by former managers. On July 21, a misunderstanding with Josh over how to set up an old SNES Nintendo system led to a walkout.
“I was like, ‘I don’t know how to do that,’ they said ‘figure it out,’ and then I stared at him,” KP said. “I’m just very taken aback by this.”
Despite Josh saying KP was being disrespectful and raising his voice, a co-worker within earshot heard the opposite. Josh told KP to clock out, and when his shift lead, who asked to remain anonymous, found out, she defended him. After a brief argument, she, KP and another employee walked out, leaving the owners to run the cafe alone.
“When Josh walked around the counter and told KP to go home, I said, ‘No. I’m the shift leader. I’m responsible for my employees,'” the former shift lead said. “Josh said, ‘That’s not your decision to make.’ I said, ‘If KP clocks out, I’m leaving too.'”
The former shift lead, who had worked at the cafe for over a year, said the incident drove her to put in her two weeks. KP was not fired but was given a “first and final notice” the following week, a decision he said his managers made reluctantly at the owners’ request. He resigned, citing lost trust in the owners.
By Aug. 8, the owners had laid off the remaining staff, citing health code violations, and announced the changes on Instagram: “The Clapping Monkey House of Coffee is in a period of change.”
The Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder reached out to owners Larson and Wenzel directly. They did not respond individually, but were connected instead with general manager Thomas Franecki-Thompson, hired two weeks ago, who said press questions were assigned to him. Thompson confirmed KP was not fired and that only two employees were officially fired.
“Both employees have every right to protest decisions within the workplace; however, they were absolutely welcome to come back for their shift,” Thompson said. “There’s always a period of evolution for employees and growth.”
After the post drew outraged comments, they were disabled. A follow-up statement posted Aug. 11 keeps comments enabled; as of Aug. 21, it has 197 comments, mostly critical of the owners. In it, Larson and Wenzel said the two terminated employees held leadership roles and were let go after reviews tied to Anoka County inspection concerns and repeated attendance violations, following months of coaching. Everyone else who left, they said, chose to resign. The owners also disputed pay figures circulating in the comments, saying total hourly pay for barista and shift lead roles, including tips, ranges from $18 to $28 an hour.
The former shift lead said months of poor leadership and culturally inappropriate behavior, not just the NES incident, drove her decision to leave. The owners had tried to instill the Omotenashi method among employees, a Japanese-style customer service approach adopted, Thompson said, at the request of a former employee of Japanese descent. But as a Chinese American woman, the former shift lead felt it was inappropriate, since both owners are white men and the cafe was run largely by white employees.
“It’s disgusting, I’m Chinese, and a lot of aspects of my culture are romanticized and called Japanese or Korean,” she said.
When employees raised the issue, the owners agreed to remove related posters, though managers ultimately took them down.
At the end of July, the owners announced a tiki bar, the “Not-So-Tipsy Tiki Room,” which former employees said was sprung on them with little notice and made them uncomfortable given tiki culture’s cultural sensitivity. “Tiki culture is just at a baseline cultural appropriation,” the former shift lead said.
The owners addressed the criticism in a July 26 Instagram post, writing that they recognized tiki culture’s complicated history and had “chosen to acknowledge it and approach it with appreciation, respect and a commitment to learning.”
Thompson said the decision came from appreciation, not appropriation. “We don’t want to claim Polynesian traditions as our own or present sacred or culturally significant things as decor,” they said. “If something feels disrespectful, we are absolutely always open to discussion with people of that background.”
“I am a Black-nonbinary-identifying person, so it’s on me to hold them accountable, and I will continue to do so,” Thompson said. “I took this job because I knew that they could do better.”
While the shop plans to reopen Aug. 29, a benefit show for former employees is being held at St. Paul venue Studio Rough Haus on Aug. 28 at 8:30 p.m.
Izzy Canizares is a contributing writer for the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder. He welcomes reader responses at isabellacani0102@gmail.com.
I would just truly like to understand where journalism has gone.. I understand digital news writing is more casual than classic news editorial but as someone with an “old fashioned” journalism degree from the 2010s I am honestly offended at the lack of journalistic integrity in this article and honestly just overall tact. But to save myself time and any more heartbreak for future “news writing” I’ll just mention blatant disregard for the fact the person you quoted as nonbinary you misgendered at least 2 times in the article.
Quite disappointing (but not shocking) coming from a queer reporter who obviously has a bias in this article.
I implore the editors (if there are any) of this publication to possibly re-up on some of their standards before letting pieces like this actually be submitted.