Bread and Roses in Cambridge was deeply intertwined with other feminist institutions operating in a supportive microeconomy: the local women’s credit union provided businesses with funding, and around the corner, New Words Bookstore hosted community events that engaged people intellectually. The feminist health center supported women’s physical well-being, while Bread and Roses kept folks fed and opened up their space to speakers, artists and musicians. “As feminists, we are naturally opposed to capitalism,” writes lesbian founders Patricia Hynes and Gillian Gane in their 1974 business proposal. “Though we cannot work outside of the realities of American economic life, we hope as far as possible to operate as an alternative to business institutions as we have known them.”
The very structure of their restaurants went against the grain of an industry that is still dominated by men and reliant on racist and sexist hierarchies. Berkeley’s worker-owned lesbian collective Brick Hut Cafe opened in 1975 and became a central meeting place for queer and trans activists, especially during the AIDS epidemic. It was affectionately nicknamed by patrons the Dyke Diner, Lesbian Luncheonette, Chick Hut and Brick Hug. Workers routinely put a sign on the door that read, “Join us at _” and wrote in whatever anti-nuclear demonstration, political rally, or queer vigil they were attending. Like Bread and Roses, they maintained strong ties with their neighbors at A Woman’s Place Bookstore, the Women’s Press Collective, and Olivia Records, a lesbian-run women’s music record label. Jazz composer Mary Watkins shot her album cover inside Brick Hut and performed an upbeat tribute to the cafe written by lesbian poet Pat Parker. For repairs and renovations, they employed Seven Sisters Construction, a feminist carpentry collective that equipped women with skills in building and remodeling. “There was not a single interview conducted for this research in which a former feminist cafe, restaurant, or coffeehouse founder did not mention her relationship to the other feminist businesses in her local areas,” Ketchum remarks.
It has never been an easy task to balance political convictions with threadbare checkbooks. Ketchum charts how tightly feminists stretched money across shoestring budgets, noting that it was not uncommon for owners to barter food in exchange for services from artists and tradeswomen. When La Fronde Feminist Restaurant opened in New York, its founder Wania had $4.68 in her bank account (the equivalent of $30 today). For patrons, the gender wage gap severely limited their ability to spend money on dining out. In 1973, working white women earned an abysmal median of 56.6 cents for every dollar a white man was paid, and for Black working women, the rate dropped further to approximately 48 cents per dollar.
Coffeehouses, however, were easier to start because they had lower operational costs. They met privately in temporary spaces like church basements or after-hours bakeries, and funded themselves through membership dues and volunteer labor. “Unlike feminist restaurants and cafes, which were overwhelmingly run by white women, coffeehouses had greater racial diversity in their collectives; yet race remained a point of tension,” Ketchum points out. The collectives often mirrored the same social injustices rampant in society, especially wherever white middle-class feminists held power. Las Hermanas Women’s Cultural Center and Coffeehouse in San Diego was a thriving collective started in 1974 by working-class Latinas who sought refuge from domestic violence. Due to its popularity, middle-class white feminists flocked to Las Hermanas, “usurped power and changed its dynamics,” writes Ketchum, causing the very women who founded the space to feel unwelcome which “eventually led to the coffeehouse’s closure.”
Many coffeehouses were drawn to lesbian separatism, a subset of feminism that called for social and geographic separation from men and usually hinged on an essentialist view of gender. “The term ‘woman’ within coffeehouse titles was especially controversial when the coffeehouses were deciding whether they were open to trans women,” Ketchum observes. Less public visibility allowed coffeehouses to enact trans-exclusionary membership policies that barred trans women from joining their collectives. This early brand of TERFism caused serious issues in how coffeehouses admitted members, because not all cis women were lesbians and not all lesbians were cis women.
