Vancouver coffee shop chain co-owner accused of creating toxic, borderline abusive work environment

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – The co-owner and co-founder of a popular Vancouver coffee shop chain is stepping aside after countless allegations he fostered a toxic, misogynistic, borderline abusive work environment.

The claims directed at Matchstick — which has five locations in Vancouver — and leader Spencer Viehweger have been emerging on an Instagram page, specifically set up to let current and former employees share their stories.

Not Our Matchstick already has more than 1,500 followers and more than 35 different posts from workers, past and present, all detailing problematic experiences at the coffee shops that, for some, allegedly contributed to mental health issues.

“He used his faith to manipulate Christians on staff to ‘do better’ or ‘be a light,'” one former employee, who says they worked at the Chinatown location for seven months in 2014, details anonymously. “This often meant working long hours and for unending minimum wage. He often challenges people’s personal world views to exercise his need to argue and be the smartest person in the room. It was embarrassing and humiliating.”

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“Spencer is a (sic) charming and intelligent. He is also a sadistic and highly effective psychological manipulator,” alleges another former employee, who worked at Matchstick for a few months in 2016.

Another worker, who says they were a supervisor and manager at Matchstick, sums up the work culture as a game of dominance and submission.

“Spencer is punitive and will undermine and belittle you for the smallest things, such as the placement of a croissant,” they claim. “You are made to feel owned, with no control over your schedule or life. It is a hyper vigilant atmosphere, constant mico-managing (sic) and systemic bullying. And for what? A wage you can barely survive on.”

Meanwhile, another person who worked with Viehweger, but at a different shop, also had questionable encounters.

The former employee claims when she asked Viehweger for a day off after finding someone to cover her shift, he said, “if you take a day off, who will do all the deposits?”

The worker adds the interaction left her “broken, exhausted, and angry.” She alleges a few minutes later, Viehweger took her into his office for a chat, where he said “I don’t mean to sound sexist but men and women communicate differently. I’m not a mind reader, you need to tell me what’s going on!”

He’s then said to have ended the conversation by placing his hand on her knee, looking her in the eye, and saying, “I’m praying for you.”

In light of the stories and allegations coming forward, a statement from the Managers of Matchstick, posted on the company’s own Instagram account, says Viehweger is stepping away from his “in-person roles” at the company “to make space for the group to process and heal.”

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The statement also says a third party HR firm has been hired.

“We plan to make space for our staff to speak up and share their concerns, and to look internally at the state of Matchstick today.”

Viehweger co-founded and co-owns Matchstick with his wife, Annie Viehweger. Matchstick opened its first coffee shop in 2012.

NEWS 1130 has reached out to Viehweger by email as well as the company for comment.

Matchstick not going far enough: former worker

A former employee, who worked at Matchstick in 2016 for about a year and a half and shared her story with Not Our Matchstick, tells NEWS 1130 she doesn’t think the company is taking things far enough.

“These steps are nothing more than white noise, they’re just trying to blow a smoke screen,” she says. “Saying that they hired a third party HR firm means that they’re just protecting themselves from their staff at this point. Asking Spencer to step down from in-person things means nothing because abusers like that thrive on manipulating and picking on people. He’s not going to stop.”

She alleges a misogynistic and tense work environment with sometimes unsafe working conditions.

“He runs the cafe as if everything is a personal slight. I would be playing music that is like really normal cafe music … and he’ll come in and say something like, ‘there’s too much guitar in this’ and he would break you down for that,” she recalls.

“Everyone was just trying to take care of themselves because Spencer kept everyone on edge … he would walk in and out all the time and people would just be frightened.”

She adds at least one man in a management position was allowed to do “whatever” he wanted, despite being reprimanded multiple times.

However, the woman also acknowledges that the specialty coffee industry is still very much a “boys club.”

“As much as I love everybody I’ve worked with, those things don’t change because they’re just ingrained in the culture.”

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