Help Save Glitter Bean Café

Your favorite queer-centric, unionized, worker co-op café needs your support and solidarity! 

Located at 5896 Spring Garden Rd in Kjipuktuk, Mi’kma’ki/ Halifax, NS, Glitter Bean Café Co-op serves much more than signature glittery-rainbow-lattes, tasty treats and sweet times.

 

Founded in 2018, Glitter Bean exists to provide employment and community space that affirms the dignity, wellness and joy of queer, BIPOC and equity-deserving communities. Our quaint and cozy cafe has become an essential space for Kjipuktuk’s queer community. We are collectively owned and democratically governed by our workers (no boss, baby!) who are majority queer and queer folks of colour. We are unionized to add another layer of protection for the rights of workers. We share our space with a dear friend and business partner, The Has Bin, a queer consignment shop. Our little business is unique and strives to be values-based, heart-forward and relational. 

 

The COVID-19 pandemic was hugely challenging for cafes (and small businesses generally), and we are no exception. We faced major financial losses which brought us to the brink of bankruptcy in May 2022 but we were not prepared to quit. With support from allies in the labour union and co-op movement, we devised and executed a recovery plan that kept us afloat to this point.

 

Despite our best collective efforts and promising signs of return to pre-pandemic business levels, we have been running a small monthly deficit and summer is our hardest season. Now, we are faced with essential equipment crapping out, a café space that desperately needs some tender-love-and-care and a workforce that can no longer sustain the pressure on our spirits, labour and pockets alone. 

 

We are humbly turning to you - our beloved patrons, queer community, and friends and allies in co-op, labour and social justice movements - to help keep Glitter Bean alive in this pivotal moment. This space and political project is built and sustained on love and solidarity and we need it now. 

 

How can you help to save the bean?

• Make a donation whether big or small. You’ll get a shout-out on our cute gratitude wall in the cafe if you offer your name!
• Share the fundraiser with your kin, pals, neighbours, colleagues, comrades
• Follow us on social media @glitterbeancafe and boost our campaign #savethebean
• Send us a love note or words of encouragement (as a comment in the gofundme, as a direct message, handwritten note, whatever!)
• Choose Glitter Bean as your go-to spot for coffee, nourishment and event space 

 

With your generous support of $25,000 we can: 

• Cover $6000 in projected losses July-September 
• Replace two broken commercial fridges and our ice machine on its last limb ($10,000)
• Create a modest $4000 labour budget for work related to business administration, business strategy planning and organizational development 
• Tend to structural repairs (leaky ceilings) and cosmetic upgrades (a fresh paint job)

Make a donation at GoFundMe