The plan puts four markers against stage one. The shop runs. The tools are built and in other people’s hands. The handover to worker ownership is underway. The first members have not been voted in. This is a dated report on the third of those, because “underway” can hide almost anything, and we would rather say what it means in numbers.
Who is on the path
The first step towards membership is Participation Certification, which we also call Worker Direction certification. You show a founder that you understand how Worker Direction works and how the Solution Seeking System runs. One person has passed it so far, and many more are close.
In practice we have let everybody take part in most of Worker Direction, certified or not. That has been the generous choice. It is probably time to hold to the rule more firmly, because a team works better when everybody in it knows the rules.
Nobody has been voted in as a member yet, so the business is still owned entirely by its founders, Shannon and me. The founders are members of a special kind, the ones who started it, and they vote the first members in after an apprenticeship of at least a year. How the whole path works has its own post.
Pay
The hourly wage here is $15.50, as of October 2026. Our next big milestone is $21.
A living wage, the way we measure it, is enough to live on comfortably and still save towards something more, because we want people here to thrive. That number changes every year and from one town to the next, which is why the commitment is to match the local figure wherever a Beanchain opens, rather than to pick one number and stop. We are not there yet.
Shannon and I do not pay ourselves a wage. In four years we have never taken a full paycheck, only enough for rent and food. That is part of the reason the design includes founder repayment.
The veto
Until the people who work here buy the business, the founders hold a veto. That makes Democratic Member Control the principle we most clearly fall short of, and we say so on purpose. It has never been used. With nobody voted in yet, there has been nothing for it to overrule, so the real test of it is still ahead.
How decisions get made in the meantime
Members vote on the business as its owners, and for now the only members are the founders. Until people who work here are voted in, the say they have is over their own work, through the teams. A team decides together and tries for consensus. When something is for the whole team to choose, like whether to close for a holiday or shorten the hours, we run a poll. People lead projects too, on the marketing team most of all. How that works, and what it has taught us, is a post of its own.
What comes next
- More people through certification, and the rule held to more firmly.
- Apprentices, and after at least a year, the first members voted in.
- An hourly wage of $21.
None of these has a date yet. When one of the four markers on the plan moves, it will be written down here.