The National Labor Relations Board has forced one of Chicago’s chicest bakeries, Lost Larson, to pay more than $2,000 to a former worker after a four-month investigation concluded that owner Bobby Schaffer and his team illegally fired a worker as retaliation for participating in organizing her workplace to raise concerns with management about wages and COVID safety measures.
Lucy Honold, a 31-year-old former worker at Lost Larson’s original location in Andersonville, filed a complaint in November 2021 claiming that Schaffer fired her via email in August 2021 after raising concerns on behalf of colleagues about workplace conditions.
Honold, who began working at the bakery in November 2020, says that just a week before her termination, she requested a demotion from her position as shift lead, citing a lack of support that she felt was necessary to succeed, according to an email reviewed by Eater.
“Organizing with my coworkers was so exciting and the camaraderie I felt with them was incredible,” Honold writes in an email to Eater. “Confronting management was scary. Their dismissal of our concerns was infuriating, and the retaliation that we experienced was demoralizing. It was a period of really intense emotion and moral clarity that will continue to shape how I think about wage labor and capitalism.”
Founded in June 2018, Lost Larson — an Eater Chicago 38 member — debuted to great fanfare on Andersonville’s densely packed main drag, buoyed in part by owner and former pastry...
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