How this place is run
Worker Direction
A way of running a business that hands the decisions to the people the decisions land on, written down in enough detail that somebody else can run it without asking us anything.
We are building a cooperative
Beanchain is worker directed today and a worker owned cooperative on the way. The word arrives when the first members are voted in, and everything on this page exists to get there with the business still standing. Worker Direction is how a shop learns to run itself before it owns itself.
It is deliberately not the purist route. We are building the version a conventional American business can actually take: the owner keeps a hand on the wheel while the ground is prepared, people learn to be owners before they are owners, and every step gets written down. If it works in a coffee shop it works in a garage, a bakery or a print shop. That is the entire point of doing it in public.
- An owner decides Most businesses
- We are here The workers direct it Beanchain today
- The workers own it Where this is going
What it is in practice
Building democracy in the workplace
Worker Direction prioritizes democracy, participation, good faith and a living wage ahead of everything else, drawing on the seven Cooperative Principles set out by the International Cooperative Alliance. In practice it is a handful of ordinary mechanisms that give people something real to decide, and regular chances to decide it.
It is also the on-ramp. A cooperative asks people to be owners, and being an owner is a skill almost nobody is taught. This is where it gets learned, on the job, with real decisions and real money attached, well before the ownership arrives.
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Casual voting
Low ceremony votes on the things that shape a shift. Deciding together is a habit, and a habit needs repetitions more than it needs occasions.
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Work teams
Paid teams anyone who works here can join. Marketing came first and is still the furthest along.
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Forums
Where proposals get made and argued over, instead of decided in an office and announced afterwards.
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Bounties
A defined unit of work with requirements and a fixed reward attached. Pick one up, do it, get paid for it.
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Recycled Knowledge
The shop pays for study, on the condition that you teach it back to everybody else.
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Participation Certification
Before joining any of the above you show a founder or member that you understand how the model works and how the Solution Seeking System runs. You cannot play a game whose rules you do not know, and one player who does not know them makes it harder for everybody else.
Worker to member
The voluntary path to membership
Nobody is pushed along this. A business that treats wanting a job and a wage as a failure of commitment has not built a better workplace. It has built a more demanding one.
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Worker
Paid for your shifts, and nothing else asked.
You are paid for your shifts and nothing else is asked of you. A lot of people will stop here, and stopping here is a legitimate choice rather than a failure to engage. A model that punishes people for wanting a job and a wage is not a better workplace.
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Apprentice
At least a year of sweat equity, not capital.
Once you have passed Participation Certification, you can ask to start. A founder or member mentors you, and you contribute sweat equity rather than capital. It runs for at least a year, because deciding to co-own a business is not a decision anybody should make in a month.
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Member
None voted in yetVoted in, with an equal vote and a share of the profit and the risk.
The existing members vote you in. A member holds an equal vote, shares in the profit, and carries the risk when a year goes badly. The founders are members of a special kind: the people who started the business, or the owners converting one they already had. Nobody has been voted in yet, so the first group is the founders’ decision and everybody after that is the membership’s.
How we measure ourselves
The seven Cooperative Principles, and where we actually stand
The principles below are not ours. They were adopted by the International Cooperative Alliance in 1995 and they are the standard the whole movement is held to, which is exactly why we use them here rather than a scorecard of our own devising. Each one lists what it asks, what we do, and where we fall short.
Three of the seven carry a shortfall today. That is the useful part of the page. Anyone copying this needs to know which principles can bend and which cannot.
- 1 Voluntary and Open Membership Meeting it
- 2 Democratic Member Control Falls short
- 3 Member Economic Participation Falls short
- 4 Autonomy and Independence Meeting it
- 5 Education, Training and Information Meeting it
- 6 Cooperation among Cooperatives Falls short
- 7 Concern for Community Meeting it
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Principle 1: Voluntary and Open Membership
Meeting itOpen to anyone willing to take on the responsibilities, without discrimination.
What we do
Anyone who works here can apply to apprentice, and what we ask for is sweat equity rather than a check. A model where joining means buying in only ever admits people who already have money, which would reproduce the thing we are trying to argue with.
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Principle 2: Democratic Member Control
Falls shortMembers set the policies and make the decisions. One member, one vote, whatever anyone put in.
What we do
Casual votes and open forums already run, and proposals get argued over rather than announced. Members will hold an equal vote.
Where we fall short
The founders hold a veto until they have sold the business to the workers, so today this principle is the one we most clearly do not meet. It is deliberate. An owner who would lose control of their business overnight does not begin the process at all, and a conversion abandoned halfway helps nobody who works here. The veto is scaffolding, and scaffolding that never comes down is just a building.
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Principle 3: Member Economic Participation
Falls shortMembers fund and control the capital. Returns follow participation, not investment.
What we do
Bounties and paid work teams already tie money to contribution rather than to job title. Members and founders share profit, take part in financial decisions, and carry the burden together in a year that goes the wrong way.
Where we fall short
Nobody has been voted in as a member yet, so this one is a design rather than a practice. Profit sharing exists on paper and has not been tested by a bad year.
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Principle 4: Autonomy and Independence
Meeting itCooperatives govern themselves, even when they take outside money or partners.
What we do
The shop is locally controlled and would stay independent of the Beanchain Network. Each Beanchain Cell keeps its own identity, its own rules and its own practices, and signs up only to a short list of commitments held in common. That constraint is written now, while there is one shop and it costs nothing to promise.
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Principle 5: Education, Training and Information
Meeting itMembers are taught enough to take part, and the public is told how cooperatives work.
What we do
Recycled Knowledge pays for study on the condition that you teach it back. Everything we work out gets published, including this page. Internally, education is also how power gets spread around: a business where one person knows everything cannot be handed to anybody, whatever that person intends.
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Principle 6: Cooperation among Cooperatives
Falls shortCooperatives work together through local, national and international structures.
What we do
The marketing team and the Solution Seeking Company are being grown into cooperatives that would serve Beanchain and businesses with no connection to it.
Where we fall short
Neither is a company yet, and the Beanchain Network and Cooperate Network do not exist. This principle is currently the part of the plan we have done the least about.
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Principle 7: Concern for Community
Meeting itCooperatives work for the sustainable development of their communities.
What we do
Pay It Forward meals, the Unhoused Help guides for four cities, a workspace that costs nothing to use, and the room handed over free for gatherings about poverty and community. This is the principle we were doing before we knew it had a number.
Further reading
Where to read about this from someone who is not us
Worker cooperatives are over a century old and we invented none of the idea. If you are weighing this up for your own business, you should not be taking a coffee shop's word for any of it. Pérotin's review is the one to start with: two decades of international data, and it is written to be read by people who run businesses.
These were opened and checked on 2026-08-09. If you find one has moved or gone, tell us and we will fix it.
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Start here
What do we really know about worker co-operatives?
Virginie Pérotin, Co-operatives UK, published 2018
Two decades of international data compared against conventional firms, and the largest study of its kind. The finding that matters most here: worker co-ops survive at least as long as conventional businesses and hold employment steadier. Written to be read by people who run businesses rather than only by economists.
www.uk.coop
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Statement on the Cooperative Identity
International Cooperative Alliance, adopted 1995
The source of the seven principles, and of the definition of a cooperative. Everything on this page is measured against this document rather than against our own summary of it.
ica.coop
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Wage inequality in workers' cooperatives and conventional firms
Nathalie Magne, The European Journal of Comparative Economics 14(2), 2017
Every French firm in the payroll data from 2001 to 2012, comparing cooperatives against conventional firms, and finding significantly lower wage inequality inside the cooperatives. Open access.
shs.hal.science
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US Federation of Worker Cooperatives
USFWC
The national membership body. Technical assistance for new and converting co-ops, advocacy, and a shared benefits program. The first call for anyone in the United States actually attempting this.
www.usworker.coop
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Democracy at Work Institute
DAWI, part of the USFWC
Research and training, and a Workers to Owners program aimed specifically at converting an existing business rather than founding a new one. That is the harder problem and the one we have.
institute.coop
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Mondragon
Mondragon Corporation, Basque Country
Around 70,000 people across a federation of cooperatives that share finance, training and support between them. The closest working example of what stages two and three of our plan are reaching for, at a scale we are nowhere near, and the best evidence that the shape works.
www.mondragon-corporation.com
If you are trying this, we will answer
The whole point of publishing the shortfalls is that somebody else gets to skip them. Write to us with what you are attempting and what has gone wrong, and you will get an honest answer rather than a pitch. There is nothing to buy here.
And if you are further along than we are, we want to hear from you most of all. Every business that makes this move makes the next one easier, which is the only way a plan this size ever gets anywhere.