Crumbs Whiskers will close “until further notice,” effective immediately, the cat cafe told employees Monday. The DC location on M Street in Georgetown was launched as the city’s first cat cafe more than a decade ago, inviting visitors to adopt or foster shelter cats. According to staff, the cafe has helped more than 3,000 cats find their forever homes. However, according to staff, that’s only part of the story. In an internal email sent out on February 9, the company, which also has a Crumbs Whiskers location in Los Angeles, announced it would close to focus on “securing stable leadership and positioning the location for long-term success.” The move comes a month after workers officially announced an attempt to unionize. The company said that despite efforts to “stabilize the location” by recruiting new management, implementing operational adjustments, and addressing team concerns, those efforts failed when two newly hired managers departed and the company declined to permanently hire a supervisor who’d been there temporarily. The email added that the cats will be sheltered by one of their partner organizations in the interim while the company navigates next steps and re-opening plans. For at least a year, escalating tensions between staff and the location’s management have stemmed from what staffers describe as unsafe and unhealthy working conditions. One worker, staffers said in a video posted online, was required to work while ill with pneumonia and bronchitis, and another was mocked by managers for staying home while sick. Other instances included a worker’s hours being abruptly cut, while another was informed about losing her job via a text message. Owner Kanchan Singh, who also goes by Zari Ruhi, tells Washingtonian the location had to close temporarily while it searched for the right leadership team so store managers can “continue providing a safe, supportive and positive environment for our staff, our cats and visitors.” The situation came to a head when the majority of DC staff members filed to unionize in January. Under the banner of CW Workers United, the DC staff announced their official petition to unionize in an Instagram post. “Behind the scenes, we employees are being exploited and taken advantage of,” staffer and union member Maddy Hanson said in the post. “Being here is often the hardest part of our day.” View this post on Instagram A post shared by Crumbs Whiskers Workers United (@cwworkersunited) In the Instagram post, staff also raised concerns about the well-being and health of the cats, which they say has been an issue for at least two years. “It takes entirely too long to get a response when we mention that a cat is having a health issue,” staffer Sydney McShan told Washingtonian. “It takes too long for them to get seen by a vet or get the medication that they need.” In a statement, Singh wrote that “we take the safety of our staff, the cats, and our visitors very seriously.” She also added that the company has “always been committed” to creating a safe space for both the team and cats, and will adddress any concerns promptly moving forward. Before the cafe closed, three members of the union say, they were ready to open a line of communication with management. “A lot of times it feels like it is difficult to speak to management when we have serious safety concerns,” says Hanson, who proposed the idea of starting the DC union. “We just want a seat at the table to advocate for ourselves, the animals, the guests, everyone.” “This doesn’t feel like a job that I can just walk away from,” employee Savannah Zuill tells Washingtonian. “At any given time we have upwards of 25 animals that depend on our care. It’s not that simple, because there’s homeless animals that depend on us.” Coffee, cats, and chaos Staff safety was a critical point of tension, staff members say. Last February, a person staffers say was likely experiencing a mental health crisis got aggressive, yelled, and slammed phones and laptops to the ground. This person repeatedly slammed the cafe’s outdoor stand against the glass door for about 20 minutes in an attempt to break into the cafe before police arrived. “There was some property damage, but also a lot of emotional trauma,” says McShan. Similarly, just last month, an individual was screaming and banging against the glass window outside. In both incidents, some staffers tell Washingtonian Singh failed to check in on the staff or provide meaningful support. Instead, Hanson alleged, “our trauma was exploited and the damage to the store was exaggerated in order to solicit donations to the business without addressing staff safety or making real improvements to working conditions.” One team member left the company because of the incident. In a statement, Singh responded to the allegations, saying that the “trauma experienced by our community and the property damage were real and impactful to operations … This was never about exploiting trauma, but rather sustaining our mission of cat care, adoption, and community engagement.” During the initial incident, DC staff said that they had to rely solely on guest footage to provide information to the police because the cafe lacked surveillance cameras. Although cameras were subsequently installed, staff say they were offline during the second incident. After the first incident, three staffers tell Washingtonian, they felt “effectively trapped” due to the cafe’s location in a lower basement level with only a single entrance and exit, and a difficult-to-lock door. As a safety measure, they requested a minimum of three staff members be present at all times, a request they say management ignored. In a statement, Singh wrote that she did check in with the on-site leadership to ensure the staff had support that they needed, and that “moving forward, I am committed to ensuring that all staff receive consistent and ongoing support after difficult incidents.” The road to unionization Hanson says her fellow staffers enthusiastically received her suggestion to unionize after those incidents. But Singh declined to voluntarily recognize the union, which prompted a store manager to resign and the staff to officially file a petition for an election with the National Labor Relations Board. Since then, union members have accused the business of attempted union-busting tactics, including reallocating current employees’ hours, hiring four new staff members (including a host with a higher starting wage than anyone else in the position) and two new external managers. In her statement, Singh said allegations of union-busting were “inaccurate” and wrote that “staffing decisions were driven by the need to stabilize operations and strengthen leadership during a transitional period. All new employees were offered standard starting wage, and no retroactive changes made to the wages of existing employees.” Former and current staff members have reached out to the DC employees online, echoing the same issues dating back to before Covid, making the current staff “feel validated in a sense that there’s a big issue in the store we really have to work towards to get resolved,” McShan says. Customers have largely supported the effort, Zuill says: “We have gotten so many comments and DMs with people standing in solidarity with us.” In response to the immediate closure, Crumbs Whiskers Workers United launched a GoFundMe to support the affected staff of 12 people, who “overnight, have lost their source of income.”The post Georgetown’s Cat Cafe Has Closed Amid Allegations of Union-Busting first appeared on Washingtonian. ...read more read less