Workers Are Trying to Buy Portland’s Shoofly Vegan Bakery After Walking Out

Shoofly Vegan Bakery and Cafe, one of Portland’s most popular wholesale bakers, suddenly went quiet on Friday, May 2, after workers walked out due to alleged late paychecks and dissatisfaction with the bakery’s new owner.

Shoofly opened in 2016 and provided vegan pastries to many coffee shops around town, including Guilder, Stumptown Coffee, Case Study Coffee, and Caffe Umbria. A reliable source of vegan goodies in many neighborhoods, the bakery is particularly renowned for its giant vegan cinnamon rolls, pecan sticky buns, and savory and sweet hand pies in offbeat flavors like vegan cheesesteak. Its 11th Avenue cafe opened in 2021.

The primary motive for the walkout was delayed paychecks, according to nine Shoofly workers. They tell Eater Portland their pay was first delayed on April 18 with no notice, with some receiving checks as late as April 21. When workers had not received pay on the morning of May 2, the 12 bakers and baristas working that day made the unanimous decision to walk out, a decision that has since been ratified by the rest of Shoofly’s employees. Workers later returned to the cafe to find the locks had been changed. Employees report that some received their pay on May 3 or May 4, and some as late as May 5.

These delayed pay issues come just a few months after the bakery’s current owner, Tien Vominh, purchased Shoofly and took over in February 2025 from the bakery’s original owner, Shannon Levens, who opened the business in 2016.

“She wanted to go do other things, and we all very much supported her in that,” says Michael Barr-Brainard, a wholesale baker at Shoofly.

The walkout was also a result of general dissatisfaction with Vominh’s leadership. Workers say Levens spent several months carefully choosing a new owner, looking for someone who wouldn’t make any drastic changes in terms of staff or business operations. But in his three months in charge, Vominh has made major alterations to the way the cafe is run, workers say.

For one thing, Vominh wanted to add panini service to the cafe’s lunch program and purchased an additional fridge and several panini machines, but the panini service never launched. “He bought us a whole bunch of expensive equipment for it, but we didn’t have any staffing to support actually doing that, so it’s all just been kind of sitting there going to waste,” says Barr-Brainard.

Staffers claim Vominh also wanted to add evening service to the cafe’s hours, but that similarly never materialized. Additionally, employees allege that he threatened to completely cut the bakery’s wholesale program, which would involve laying off most of the bakery’s staff.

Eater Portland reached out to Vominh through calls and texts but he did not respond.

The owner acknowledged the delayed paychecks in an April 21 email to employees reviewed by Eater Portland, saying, “I just wanted to reach out to apologize to those affected by the late paycheck this past week. I want to assure you that this will never happen again. I’m updating the process to make sure this issue doesn’t happen again.”

Shortly after the walkout, Vominh sent an email to Shoofly’s wholesale clients informing them that the bakery was ending its wholesale operations — to the dismay of many Shoofly employees. Not only would cutting wholesale mean that most bakers would lose their jobs, but for many Portlanders, local coffee shops are their easiest way to access Shoofly’s vegan pastries.

Beyond being paid on time, workers want to ensure they all remain employed, and that Shoofly’s wholesale program continues to be the heart of the business.

“We’ve had a huge outpouring of support from our wholesale partners,” says Justin Hillsmith, a baker at Shoofly who is acting as the workers’ main point of contact for media. “We want to continue having the community that we’ve always had.”

On May 3, Shoofly’s wholesale supervisor, Kelley Bayles, started a GoFundMe to help raise money for the employees to compensate for lost wages during the walkout and to either purchase the business from Vominh, or start their own wholesale vegan bakery. As of May 9, the fundraiser has reached nearly $10,000.

Workers also launched an Instagram page, @workers_for_shoofly, to spread the word about fundraisers and how to help the employees. So far, they’ve scheduled two fundraising bake sales and cake silent auctions: one at vegan cafe Memento Mori from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday, May 10, and another at the worker-owned bar Worker’s Tap from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Sunday, May 11.

On May 7, workers say they briefly met with Vominh to discuss potentially purchasing the business. Workers believe Vominh is amenable to a sale, depending on the price. “He basically asked us for a number,” says Hillsmith. They are currently coming up with an offer.

“We just want to keep us baking together,” says Hillsmith. “I love my coworkers and I want to keep doing what we’re doing, and not let what Shannon spent nine years doing fade into irrelevance.”