Lekker Cafe is a horrible employer and company.

Lekker Cafe is worst place I’ve ever worked at.

TLDR: Paying far beneath minimum wage, making us work without a contract, horrendous mismanagement.

Just to preface, it was not me who did the graffiti. imagine my surprise after an evening of complaining to my partner about this terrible employer, only to open Reddit and see that some mad person is writing boycott Lekker cafe all around town.

I’ve seen a lot about how bad of an experience this cafe has been on the customer side: bugs in food, long wait times, creepy managers etc. So I thought I’d give my perspective as a member of staff who’s unfortunately had to work here. For obvious reasons, I’m using a throwaway account, but everything I’m about to say is my own personal experience working here and is true and verifiable by other members of staff and myself, as I have been keeping receipts.

I’m making this post to warn people about working at this cafe, if they do remain open. You’re free to make your own choices obviously, and if they get their act together hopefully working for them won’t be as bad in the future. But for now, it’s a shit show.

A lot of the managements approach to hiring and employment has been, at best, messy and at worst, illegal. To save your attention spans by far the worst thing they’ve done is pay me far below minimum wage. When I brought this up with HR, I was ignored and so following this, I’ve been in contact with HMRC. The ignoring of important messages by staff is a recurring theme you’ll see in this post. In the run up to being paid, our questions about the payroll would go ignored. We were told that we’d be paid on one day, and then it would be five days later. Moreover, our contracts were consistently pushed back. We were told on a training day that our contracts would be ready tomorrow, and we never saw it. When we asked about our contracts we were ignored. When we asked about when we’re getting paid, we’d be ignored. Our messages would even get deleted sometimes.

Another issue is that we had to buy our own uniform without compensation. Whilst this isn’t a requirement as an employer it’s just rubbing salt on the wound after how little I was paid by them. One of these uniform items was only worn once after the cafe had to put an end to their evening shifts a week into being open.

More on the extreme disorganisation:

-they hired far too many staff. One member of staff was given a verbal job offer like the rest of us, went out to buy uniform as instructed, and five days later was told that the job offer was rescinded. After they asked why, they were told that it was a mistake and that they were in fact hired. Myself and others had handed our notices in at this point, and if we had gotten that message rescinding our employment, for good, we would’ve been fucked.

-on that note of hiring too many staff, the initial contract we were proposed in our interviews and on boarding was either full or part time. At the last minute it was changed to a zero hour contract after we handed in our notices for previous jobs.

-there were multiple instances of management being late to work on training and the first few days of being open, leaving staff outside in horrible weather for up to 40 minutes into the unpaid mandatory training or shift.

-45 minutes before an opening shift, the staff that day were asked to show up an hour early. Obviously no one could make it.

-We were scolded for not being able to make an unpaid unscheduled menu testing the next day.

-in one instance, staff had to work a 7 hour shift without a break.

-they’ve been review bombing themselves with 5 star reviews written by family, staff and AI.

There’s also countless practical issues behind the bar and in the kitchen but that’s not what this post is about, which is the treatment of staff. The odd issue here and there when a cafe or any company is in the process of opening is expected, however the consistency of error and unethical treatment of staff is not a series of mistakes, but signals a severe lack of respect for the staff at the heart of management. This attitude is also now being reflected in how some customers have been treated, leaving them waiting for hours at a time, and the absolutely damming accusation that a manager had touched customers inappropriately (https://share.google/PXHlFhBcJH1NMCzjX).

Overall a terrible experience and it goes beyond just being the opening month for the cafe. Potential employees, no matter how desperate you are, I’d advise to avoid at all costs because I was desperate, and now I’ve been left out of pocket because of them.