On Monday, workers at two Peet’s stores in Davis, California, petitioned for National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) union elections with Workers United, the same union organizing baristas with Starbucks Workers United (SBWU). Both stores reportedly have near unanimous support, so they will likely become the chain’s first unionized corporate-owned stores. This is the latest surge in an ongoing wave of barista organizing that started with Gimme! Coffee workers in Ithaca in 2017, then expanded to SPoT Coffee in Buffalo and Rochester in 2019, Pavement Coffee in Boston and Cambridge and Colectivo Coffee in Milwaukee and Chicago in 2021, before the first historic union victory at Starbucks in Buffalo, New York, on December 9, 2021.

Two things stand out about the Peet’s organizing effort: the company’s opportunity to choose a different path from the aggressive union busting carried out by other coffee chains, and the promise of SBWU’s replicable model based largely on the dynamism of dozens of grassroots worker organizers.