Thursday, June 19, was the last night of service for the foreseeable future at Capitol Hill steakhouse Bateau and its twin cocktail lounge Boat Bar. After a shift spent alternately serving customers and throwing away food and projects in process, the crew shut the restaurant down early, then sat down to eat together. For their swan-song meal, they arranged the flowers, cooked up some leftover steaks, and made good use of the open wine bottles. The group was joined by former crew members, regulars, and other friends who stopped in to pay their respects, and the tears flowed alongside the wine. 

According to staff members at the party, they were joined by two corporate employees from Sea Creatures, the ocean-themed restaurant group founded by celebrated Seattle chef Renee Erickson that owns Bateau and Boat Bar, dining with the people they’d just laid off. They didn’t help cook or clean, the staff said—just ate the food, but not before telling workers to make sure they clocked out before dinner started. There was no word from or sign of Erickson.

The following day, Bateau and Boat Bar’s Instagram accounts were loaded with photos and videos of the staff celebrating their last supper. Comments on those posts have been turned off.

Officially, the news had broken on June 5: A press release from Sea Creatures announced that Bateau and Boat Bar would be closing temporarily, effective June 19. Alongside the temporary closures, it read, two of the four General Porpoise bakery/coffee shops would close permanently. 

The plan is for Bateau and Boat Bar to reopen in three to six months, whereupon the bar will be absorbed into Bateau. The other two General Porpoise locations in Pioneer Square and the Amazon Spheres will remain open. 

“Over the past several months,” the press release read, “Sea Creatures has been thoughtfully considering updates to the concepts behind Bateau and Boat Bar…. With key team members now departing to pursue new opportunities, this natural transition point provides the right moment to move forward with these long-considered changes. … Sea Creatures looks forward to welcoming guests and staff back to a reimagined Bateau and Boat Bar later this year.” 

But in the way that there are no secrets on an island, scuttlebutt about the impending closures had already started making waves throughout Seattle’s professionally consanguineous restaurant industry. Two days before Sea Creatures dropped the press release, the city’s restaurants and social media accounts wondered if the impending closures had something to do with the company’s recently formed union. Several Sea Creatures employees, as well as union officers—themselves former employees of The Walrus and the Carpenter, Sea Creatures’ flagship restaurant—had a similar saga to tell in person, and it all starts with a service charge.

Nicole Hardina is on the advisory board of the Sea Creatures union (the wonderfully named United Creatures of the Sea), which filed a petition to unionize in February 2025. She’s also a former front of house lead, manager, and bartender at The Walrus and the Carpenter and its attached Barnacle Bar. Hardina describes an all-hands meeting in December 2024, with the staff from most of Sea Creatures’ fleet.  Workers at The Walrus and the Carpenter and Barnacle Bar, Bateau and Boat Bar, The Whale Wins, Wilmott’s Ghost, Deep Dive, Westward, and Lioness were told the restaurant company “had fallen on hard times.”

“They’re losing money year over year, and are going to have to make some changes starting January 1,” Hardina told The Stranger. 

“The change,” she says, “was that we were no longer going to be a tip-pooled company. They were going to be instituting a service charge—and taking 54.5 percent of that service charge for the house, leaving 45.5 percent of that service charge for workers to split among themselves. This amounted to a pretty tremendous pay cut, which we realized in pretty short order during the meeting.

“This was right before the holidays, so people had already booked travel and bought gifts. This expensive time of year, we were already knee-deep in. They told us they’d been considering this for about a year. They had not asked for any input from workers.” 

Jeff Kelley, the union’s executive officer and a former server/bartender at the Walrus and the Barnacle, chimes in. “They framed it as: Because they were not making enough money in the past couple years, their aim was to profit 22 percent in 2025. The first 10 percent was gonna be from raising menu prices. The second 12 percent of that 22 percent was gonna be the portion they were taking out of the service charge.”

Hardina, Kelley, and Ford Nickel, the union’s secretary–treasurer and a former server at Walrus, all say management acknowledged that workers could likely make more money somewhere else. They said they were sorry that the new service charge and the end of pooled tips would impact the workers negatively, and they understand if folks want to quit.  

Hardina says, “Worker response was ‘This feels like an emergency. We’re being told, “Accept or leave.”’ And we decided that there was a third path, which for us was to organize. So we spent our winter holidays doing just that.”

Nickel acknowledges that thanks to the end of the tip credit in our city's minimum wage, there was a significant wage increase on January 1, raising all front-of-house hourly employees of Sea Creatures restaurants from $20.76 to $25 an hour, and that the service charge is ostensibly tied to that extra cost. Regardless of the wage bump, though, he says that the switch-out of a pooled tip system for a service charge has left employees in dire straits. 

“It’s effectively like a five- or six-dollar reduction in pay,” he says. “But as soon as the summer rolls around, people are looking at 10 to 15 dollars [less] an hour. They’re looking at 150 dollars a shift.” 

None of the three union members who we spoke to for this story are presently employed by Sea Creatures Group, although they do still work for the independent United Creatures of the Sea union. They aren’t paid for their union jobs, as Sea Creatures employees are not charged union dues.

Even though he doesn’t work for Sea Creatures anymore, Nickel credits the service charge and the workers’ resultant reduced wages as the reason for the union’s existence. Kelley points out that they could have just quit their jobs and moved on, rather than sticking to the union after they left Walrus/Barnacle Bar.

“The options we were given were to just accept the changes that they put on us unilaterally, or to quit,” Kelley says. If they had quit, “not only are you kind of accepting the fact that you have no power over the situation, but you’re also kind of being complicit in the fact that somebody else is gonna take that job because they need it.” 

 “In an industry that is more or less transient, exploitation becomes very easy,” Kelley says. “Because even though we might leave in a huff, we might be angry about it, we might tell all our friends, ‘Hey, screw this place,’ the place still just gets to operate whatever way they want, because we just go get another job and forget about it a year from now. So, we’re refusing to do that.”

On June 3, two days before the public announcement, Sea Creatures leadership told employees of Bateau and Boat Bar that the conjoined resto-bar would close temporarily on June 19, mentioning only a plan to reopen in three and six months—but no guarantee that it would. 

Several former and current employees say that, of those who will lose their jobs, only managers were offered to be relocated to other Sea Creatures restaurants. Some allege they’re being urged to quit and find other jobs. It was also suggested by several workers that Sea Creatures may prefer to replace them with fresh new employees—people who, as Kelley suggested, don’t remember a time at these jobs when 100 percent of the pooled tips went directly to workers’ pockets, rather than just 45.5 percent of a service charge.  

While the union officers spoke on the subject freely and didn’t mind having their names known, some current employees went on the record willingly but requested to remain anonymous. Others spoke strictly off the record. One claimed that talking to the media goes against company policy at Sea Creatures. Because my interviews took place before the closures, several workers mentioned a fear of being fired as retaliation, which could cost them their unemployment eligibility. 

In his email response, Sea Creatures co-owner Jeremy Price cites different figures than the union does—most glaringly in the notion that 45.5 percent of the service charge goes to the team and 54.5 percent goes to the house. The way he couched it, 100 percent of the service charge is retained by the restaurant and used to pay operating expenses—including labor. 

“Of that total,” he writes, “50 percent goes directly to hourly staff, front and back of house, as additional compensation on top of their base hourly wage. For example, servers at Bateau and Boat Bar earned between $45.98 and $52.36/hour on their most recent paychecks: $25 from their base wage, plus another ~$20–$27/hour from the service charge distribution. These additional hourly earnings are not overtime—they [are] additional earnings drawn from the service charge pool and are paid to all hourly team members.”

The other half of the service charge, Price says, is used to cover core expenses, including but not limited to Sea Creatures’ $25-per-hour base wage; health, vision, and dental benefits for employees working 25+ hours per week; and a 401(k) with employer match for employees working 20+ hours per week.

On June 5, hours before the Sea Creatures press release went out, Price had this to say via email, after I’d written to the general email address at Sea Creatures to ask if the restaurant closures had anything to do with the union.

“The team at Bateau and Boat Bar voted to unionize in early February of this year,” Price wrote. “We fully support their right to do so and have had no issue with that decision. Bateau and Boat Bar will continue to be union restaurants when they reopen.”

“Sales at both restaurants have been steadily declining since 2024,” he went on, “and we’ve been actively discussing ways to reinvigorate the concepts for some time—considering changes to the menu, service style, and dining room design.

“Less than two weeks ago, Bateau and Boat Bar’s longtime chef gave notice… Just two days later, Bateau and Boat Bar's general manager also let us know that she was accepting a promotion to Director of Operations with another restaurant group, also after a decade with us. …The departure of these key leaders created a natural inflection point for us and for the restaurants. We made the decision to temporarily close both Bateau and Boat Bar for a planned refresh…. We anticipate a closure of 3–6 months while we focus on making updates that will position both restaurants for long-term success.

All current staff will be recalled when we reopen.”

The union isn’t sure about that last bit. On June 5, Nickel asserted that The Walrus and the Carpenter was hiring, but he and Kelley say there’s been no conversation between workers and Sea Creatures about offering those available jobs to anybody at Bateau who’s slated to be displaced—or about moving qualified servers from Bateau to any other Sea Creatures restaurant.

In the same breath, Nickel raises yet another concern around the hiatus: the status of the union itself. “Creating a situation where [Bateau and Boat Bar are] gonna have an entirely new set of employees makes it very easy for Sea Creatures to decertify the union’s representation of that bargaining unit. Especially if they extend it to six months, which already gets them halfway to a place where they can file for a decertification petition after suppressing the deadline.“

Mitigating the word temporarily is, of course, the current economic climate in Seattle—the planet’s 8th most expensive city to live in, per CNBC. It’s hard to fathom that the average Seattleite could afford to take three to six months off from work, unpaid, while banking on the misty hope of getting their job back at an unspecified date. 

“I would say it behooves almost everyone who’s working at Bateau to just get another job immediately,” Kelley says. “Closing for three to six months means effectively not going back to your jobs for three to six months, unless you can get unemployment for that amount of time. There’s no end game besides getting another job.”

There are more problems lurking beneath the surface of that service charge too, Nickel, Hardina, and Kelley agree. One is that they think the language used to explain it to guests is pretty murky.

On the menus, Nickel says, “Guests are informed that 100 percent of the 22 percent service charge is retained by the house, with a link leading to more information. They don’t explicitly say that that 45 percent [sic] is directly payable to the employees. They’ll say instead that they use the service charge for all of these benefits.” 

Hardina dials up The Walrus and the Carpenter’s website on her phone. “It says at the very bottom of the menu, in a very small font: ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter and Barnacle Bar have added a 22 percent service charge to all dine-in checks. 100 percent of this service charge is retained by The Walrus and the Carpenter and Barnacle Bar. Gratuities are not expected, but any that you choose to leave are shared 100 percent among our hourly employees.’”

“So. If you stop right there,” Kelley says, “there’s a discrepancy. There’s The Walrus and the Carpenter, which 100 percent of it is going to, but when you add an added gratuity, that’s going to the hourly employees. So the inference there, that they hope people don’t understand, is that those are two different entities.” 

Another red herring I see, whether intentional or not, lies in telling guests that a gratuity isn’t expected, which may lead them to think they’ve already tipped the crew via the service charge. 

Both the service charge as well as the way it’s described to guests, Hardina says, has created a boatload of confusion for both guests and workers. “And an ethical dilemma for workers,” she adds, “who now must drop a check dozens of times a night that is a lot more than it used to be and that contains language that’s unclear.”

Nickel adds, “We think [Sea Creatures may have chosen] 22 percent because if they simply slapped a 12 percent service charge on there, people would view it the same way as they would any restaurant that has, like, a 5 percent service charge. They see it just as a money grab for the company, in the same way hotels have resort fees and ticket vendors have convenience fees. So they chose a number that, we believe, would lead guests to think it’s in place of a tip.” 

Meanwhile, Price’s tack—that the temporary Bateau/Boat Bar closure is due to the departure of two key team members, chef Taylor Thornhill and general manager Jamie Irene—has been believed by some at the company but not others. Irene herself seems to think it holds water. 

Formerly Sea Creatures’ director of hospitality, Irene says that the day after Bateau chef Taylor Thornhill tendered his resignation, she was contacted about “a job that was a better job for me.” She’ll be the new director of operations for Sugar Shack Unlimited, Marcus Lalario’s restaurant group, overseeing Ciudad, Mezzanotte, Darkalino’s, and Fat’s Chicken & Waffles. After accepting the role, Irene resigned from Bateau two days after Thornhill had. 

“And then I think [Sea Creatures] decided to do this in direct response to [Thornhill] and I leaving. I mean, for sure, they have been in conversation with us about maybe doing something to reconceptualize Bateau. They asked us if we wanted to be a part of that and gave us some time to think about it. And they just decided to do it. I actually hadn’t decided—this [new job] came to me out of nowhere. And it just happened to come when Taylor was leaving. So, it was just timing.”

When asked whether the union’s pushback on the service charge issues has spawned Sea Creatures’ decision to close the four restaurants, Irene says, “I think that’s a matter of opinion.”

Other Sea Creatures employees certainly have opinions as well. One worker who wished to remain anonymous says the closures feel like a two-birds-one-stone situation, alleging that Thornhill and Irene had tried for years to buy Bateau and Boat Bar. When the deal fell through, they say, that’s what triggered the closure, not the pair’s resignations. 

“If Thornhill and Irene bought the restaurant,” they say, “the company would have easily offloaded the union and loans they have out on the restaurant. If [Bateau and Boat Bar] didn’t sell, the plan was to close and remodel, regardless if Thornhill and Irene stayed or not.” (According to the union, Bateau carries a debt of around $2 million. Price confirmed that the company had been operating with debt, but did not confirm the amount.) 

“The closure of three to six months puts all us hourly employees in a difficult spot,” they continue, “especially those with health insurance needs. We can [either] try to survive six months without income or find new jobs.”

They point to the union as a factor behind the closures, though, saying that, when the workers did file a petition to unionize, “the company spent thousands of dollars to fly in a ‘union educator’ from New York who ended up being a union buster trying to dissuade us from organizing.” (Price says that they hired a "neutral 3rd party person to speak with them on the pros and cons of unionizing.") 

Nickel says that companies facing unionization often use a similar strategy. “And one of the first things they do is bring in an expert on unions,” he says. “And one of their first points was that, y’know, ‘It’s gonna cost you money. Dues are a thing. You have to rent offices and hire lawyers and pay full-time salaries.’ And that’s just not the case.”

Another employee, who asked to remain anonymous because they were concerned about possible retribution from Sea Creatures, implied that Bateau and Boat Bar have long been the island of misfit toys in the Sea Creatures archipelago. They describe a tenured crew who previously liked their jobs but increasingly felt that the company has jumped the shark recently, and a contentious relationship that’s been bubbling for years.

“I don’t know if anyone’s told you about the strike that happened in 2022,” they said. “There was a dispute over alleged overpayment, and the staff and the company didn’t agree on it, and so the staff went on strike, and the company shut the restaurant down.” Bateau was closed for 11 days before the dispute was resolved. 

After that, they say, Sea Creatures had “a distaste” for the team at Bateau, and that workers suspect Sea Creatures is using Irene and Taylor’s resignations as an excuse to shut the restaurant down and replace the staff. 

The team’s not pleased about the service charge either, they say. “This last December, exactly one week before Christmas, they told us they were gonna put in a service charge, take 55% [sic] of it, and their line is: ‘The reason we’re doing that is to offer benefits.’” But workers were already receiving benefits before the service charge, they say, and now they’re actually getting fewer benefits. “So their line about how it’s better [for workers], to offer us benefits in exchange for keeping over half of the service charge, is just, like, patently false.”

Most guests don’t tip on top of the service charge because they think the service charge is the tip. “As anyone would. If you’re at a full-service restaurant, you think the service charge is going to the people serving you.“

It was choppy seas over the last two weeks for Bateau and Boat Bar’s staff, they added. “It was wild, watching guests go from casually inquisitive on our next steps to boiling with rage when they found out a little more of the story. Most people assumed we were getting places at other Sea Creatures spots.” 

The dishwashers reportedly still haven’t found other jobs, they say, while the company is emailing the former staff various ads for cooks, dishwashers, servers, and managers at Sea Creatures businesses. “[Management] sent an email letting us know we could apply to other places—one of the cooks did and never heard back from the company.” 

Lastly, Anonymous Worker No. 2 says, their pro-union sentiment is “100% shared by every single staff member” at Bateau and Boat Bar. “It was in the Seattle Times that 13 out of 22 people voted for the union. But only one person voted against it. That day, I think people were out of town, and one got the time wrong, so some didn’t vote. But there was only one no vote. And later, General Porpoise, all of the doughnut shops and the [commissary] bakery, they all voted 100% yes to join the union. Happy employees don’t unionize.”

At the end of the day, it’s not possible to prove Sea Creatures' motive behind shuttering these restaurants, however long they’re closed. Anyone who wasn’t in the room for the conversation can only base their opinion on the press release, the personal takes of workers and union members, and, if they like, the whispers on the tide. 

What's manifest, though, is that a titanic gulf in narratives exists between the company and some of its employees. Perhaps germanely, Sea Creatures does have a reputation for its turbulent working environments. Price recommended that I chat with some of their happy workers, rather than “a small minority of folks whothat are disgruntled.” But gruntled or otherwise, current employees were generally reluctant to speak on the record. Of course, happy workers don’t usually want to talk to the media, but they also don't unionize, aforesaid. 

As well, Seattleites have a long memory for a stank reputation—even when the source of the stank might be water under the bridge today. Which is to say that union’s only a few months old, so maybe we give it time to do what unions do. If United Creatures of the Sea is able to navigate a satisfactory resolution with Sea Creatures Group and map out some future boundaries, it could be smooth sailing for workers going forward. 

In the meantime, a bunch of highly skilled industry folks just got shitcanned, through no fault of their own, so let’s hope that Seattle’s tight-knit pod of hospitality workers can help these restaurant refugees swim to shore. Or, if they want to wait out the closures, help keep them afloat with gigs in the meantime. As this city seems to well know, a rising tide lifts all boats.