Dream dies for dining spots with a mission
Restaurant Opportunities Center United, the national restaurant worker nonprofit, has pulled the plug on its ambitious but embattled Colors restaurant — in Oakland and across the country, a spokesperson for the organization confirmed to The Chronicle.
It’s a reversal for the worker-centric restaurant with an equity mission, which had planned locations in Washington, D.C., and New Orleans, in addition to the now-shuttered outposts in New York City and Detroit. Though ROC United and Colors faced accusations of discrimination and wage theft, respectively, the nonprofit had always said the restaurant expansion plan would continue.
Oakland location, which is part of the Restore Oakland building in Fruitvale, will temporarily be taken over by acclaimed Arab bakery Reem’s, which recently closed its original Oakland location for good. Meanwhile, ROC will continue to use the building a few days a week for its hospitality training program, Colors Hospitality Opportunities for Workers, according to the ROC spokesperson.
The decision to ax the Colors restaurants is part of a larger effort to refocus on its hospitality training program and to get out of restaurant management entirely, the spokesperson said. The group declined to share more details on the decision.
Colors restaurant as a concept could have been revived under a different operator: One Fair Wage, a nonprofit working to end sub-minimum wage for tipped restaurant workers. That organization split off from ROC in 2019. Under the terms of the split, One Fair Wage could have reopened the restaurant, but a spokesperson for the organization said it had no plans to do so.
ROC was created shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to help surviving workers from the Twin Towers’ Windows on the World restaurant. By 2006, the group had raised enough funds to open the first Colors restaurant in New York City, with a mission that would center workers’ rights, including higher pay and more benefits. The Detroit location opened in 2012, and ROC committed to opening Colors in Oakland, Washington, D.C., and New Orleans.
Colors was initially thought to be a model for change in an industry where workers, particularly people of color, can be subjected to discrimination, low wages and long work hours. At the original New York restaurant, staffers had health insurance and made $10 above the tipped hourly rate at the time.
But the restaurant never quite lived up to its lofty ambitions. The original New York Colors closed in 2017 following allegations from some employees of wage theft and late payments; a federal court ultimately dismissed that lawsuit. A revamped Colors opened in December 2019 under chef Sicily Sewell-Johnson, but that too closed just a month later after ROC pulled funding from the restaurant.
Sewell-Johnson has previously said the relaunch was a “mess” from the beginning, with ROC not having set up basic things like health insurance and payroll. ROC’s executive director, Sekou Siby, said at that time that the restaurant’s reopening was always intended as a “test drive.” The Detroit outpost went dark that same month and never reopened.
Oakland’s Colors seemed to be a last hope. It was announced with much fanfare in 2019; beloved Bay Area chef Nelson German was set to develop an Afro-Latino menu for the restaurant partly inspired by his mother’s cooking in New York City. German confirmed to The Chronicle via email that he’s no longer involved with the project.
That too became mired in troubles soon after. The Ella Baker Center, the human rights organization that shares the building with ROC, sued ROC United over construction costs relating to the Restore Oakland building. The Ella Baker Center alleged it had borne the brunt of the costs. The two parties agreed to settle the matter, according to legal filings.
ROC is also facing a lawsuit from ex-workers, including one in Oakland, who have alleged discrimination, wrongful termination and retaliation on the part of the company for raising concerns about its working conditions. The lawsuit is ongoing.
Though Colors may not return, the model for workercentric food businesses is not dead in the Bay Area. The region already has a long legacy of worker-run restaurants from businesses such as Berkeley’s Cheese Board. More recently, worker-owned restaurants have been on the rise. Reem’s, for instance, is planning to turn into a cooperative.