La Colombe workers got raises and perks after Chobani bought the company. But will the iconic Philly coffee brand stay the same?

Chobani employees had a request for management at a recent town hall: free coffee.

Nearly half a year after the company’s acquisition of Philadelphia-based coffee roaster La Colombe, Chobani’s 2,700-person team was eager to see their free-yogurt benefit expand to include caffeinated beverages. Leaders said they want to make that happen — and free yogurt for La Colombe’s crew, too.

It’s just one small gesture in a greater plan to integrate the companies since the brands married late last year.

As the smaller company, La Colombe is seeing more adjustments — which Chobani leaders characterized as upgrades — as well as leadership changes and a few dozen departures in its corporate structure.

That’s not to say the La Colombe brand is disappearing.

Despite 25 to 30 departures from La Colombe’s 900-person workforce since the merger, the coffee arm is hiring at least 40 corporate employees, said Chobani’s chief communications officer, Ben Boyd, as it increases canned beverage distribution.

The majority of the new jobs will be in Philadelphia, while others will be based across the country in sales roles. The city remains important to La Colombe and Chobani by extension, leaders said.

They’re also trying to secure a new product-testing space in Philadelphia, in addition to more office space beyond La Colombe’s corporate offices in Fishtown. And the company plans to invest $10 million in La Colombe facilities, including in a Michigan manufacturing plant and cafés across the country.

“A big component of the La Colombe brand is being from Philadelphia,” said Kathryn O’Connor, chief marketing officer at La Colombe. “We are a national brand now, but our home is Philadelphia, and we don’t intend to change that.”

Hamdi Ulukaya, Chobani’s founder and CEO, was no stranger to La Colombe when he acquired the coffee giant for $900 million in December. Ulukaya, who founded the yogurt company in 2005, joined La Colombe as an investor and became the majority owner in 2015. At the time, he said he got to know La Colombe’s founders while looking for a coffee roaster for Chobani cafés.

Chobani and La Colombe are “like-minded,” Ulukaya said. “We’re different from a personality, where we come from, our history, but we are … the same fabric.”

Still, Chobani said La Colombe would continue as an independent brand.

“La Colombe is not … becoming Chobani,” Ulukaya said. “It stays what it is. It’s got the Philadelphia edge. It’s got the grit. It’s got the personality.”

A new La Colombe product launched in April gives a peek at that “edge” under new ownership. The canned draft latte has two more ounces per can than the original launched in 2016 and a new recipe with less sugar than other brands — while preserving La Colombe’s signature froth.

“Coffee doesn’t need a lot of sugar to taste great,” O’Connor said.

The updated draft latte cans also sport La Colombe’s new logo. The dove now faces right (instead of left) for a sense of “forward momentum,” O’Connor said.

“We have definitely touched the brand lightly,” she said, calling it more “tweaks” than “redesign.”

La Colombe — French for “the dove”— launched in Philadelphia in 1994 with a café in Rittenhouse Square. It was named after La Colombe d’Or, a cafe in cofounder J.P. Iberti’s hometown.

The brand was long known for a simple coffee menu. But La Colombe had already started tweaking its offerings in 2022, before the merger, introducing flavors and then larger drink sizes at cafés.

“We were very adamant that our coffee didn’t really need any extra flavors; it was good on its own,” said Katie Thomas, senior manager of training and quality assurance at cafés. “But people like flavors, so we decided to open up that door for us and for them. Our priority of keeping the quality of our coffee has not changed at all.”

Two Philadelphia baristas said La Colombe’s adding new flavors and sizes pre-merger was a bellwether.

“It was a bit disappointing,” said one part-time Philadelphia barista, hired two years ago. She asked not to be named out of fear of retaliation from Chobani. “It used to set us apart that we were a no-BS coffee operation.”

For workers, it also meant more work — at first for no additional pay. But then, with the Chobani merger, came raises.

The company has spent $20 million to bring salaries, bonuses, and benefits at La Colombe up to Chobani’s level, chief people officer Shari Eaton said. That included a new minimum wage of $20 an hour for part-time and full-time hourly employees, which took effect in February. “It was $4-plus in movement for some folks. Baristas were excited,” Eaton said.

“We were pretty stoked,” said another Philly barista. He has worked at La Colombe for around five years and asked to remain anonymous for fear of jeopardizing future work. But shortly after getting a raise, his weekly hours got cut from around 17 to 12, and some colleagues at his cafe noticed the same.

The part-time barista with two years’ experience said her location started cutting an entire shift or two on some days. A few of her full-time colleagues suddenly fell short of the minimum hours to qualify for health insurance, she said.

Chobani denies that the raises and reduced hours are related. “Since December, there has been no effort or directive to reduce the number of hours that an employee would be eligible to work in any given week,” Boyd said.

In general, team meetings at the café have taken on a more corporate feel since the merger, the barista with two years experience said. Managers seem more strict about store policies, she said, and shift changes now require more multitasking between serving customers and taking care of the store. Some of the added rigor is a good thing, she noted, like a greater emphasis on sanitation.

Despite the changes, both baristas plan to stick around for now. “They pay awesome … the place is still a great place to work,” said the barista with five years experience.

In the company’s corporate structure, too, changes have taken place. Departures in La Colombe’s business functions included president Chuck Chupein and chief financial officer Brent Chu.

Boyd declined to talk about individual exits but acknowledged redundancies in certain areas like finance, leading to between 25 and 30 departures.

That’s not unexpected in a deal like this, said David Woolf, a lawyer at Faegre Drinker in Philadelphia who counsels clients on the workforce aspects of mergers and acquisitions.

“That’s why people do deals, to some degree, is for efficiencies,” Woolf said, who did not advise on this merger.

Boyd also noted that about 20 members of Chobani leadership have moved into roles at La Colombe, some temporarily and some permanently, to bring an “infusion of expertise” in making the product available more widely. O’Connor emphasized that La Colombe employees got to keep their titles. They weren’t downgraded to fit into the larger Chobani hierarchy.

Ulukaya pledged at the outset of the merger that La Colombe employees, not just executives, would benefit from the deal. Chief people officer Eaton pointed to several ways the company is sticking to that promise.

In addition to hourly worker raises, La Colombe employees got three more floating holidays, access to an emergency employee assistance fund, and wellness reimbursement. Chobani plans to “harmonize” the rest of its health benefits for La Colombe workers this summer during open enrollment, Eaton said.

Chobani’s equity program — the company began offering ownership stake to 2,000 full-time employees in 2016 — will be rolled out to the La Colombe team in the near future.

“They haven’t had an equity plan at La Colombe. So this is a significant investment in their long-term future,” Eaton said.

While it’s generally not a requirement to level out benefits and pay post-merger, Woolf said, it’s fairly common. The practice “eliminates potential sore spots” of employees on one side of the deal feeling like they’re second-class, he said.

Ulukaya described the extension of equity to workers as “recognition of people who work for the company that deserve to get it.”