Ghirardelli closes flagship San Francisco shop as workers strike 22%
By Aidin Vaziri6%
7/30/2026, 10:05:34 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 20 faulty reasoning types, including Appeal to Authority, Burden of Proof, and Confirmation Bias, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 24.2% saturation with 158 hits. Analysis detected 664 faulty-reasoning hits from 652 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 29.1% and a BS Rank of 22% (22,144 of 28,076 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 78.90% of the article peer group.
Ghirardelli closed its flagship chocolate and ice cream shop in San Francisco on Thursday after union workers walked off the job, prompting picketers to move to another company location that remained open in Ghirardelli Square.
The Original Ghirardelli Chocolate & Ice Cream Shop shut down after workers began a three-day strike, according to Unite Here Local 2, which represents employees at the store.
Ghirardelli directed customers to the nearby Ghirardelli Chocolate Experience and Ghirardelli Chocolate To Go, the union said.
Workers subsequently moved their picket line to the Chocolate Experience.
Ghirardelli had not responded to requests for comment by late Thursday morning, or said how long the flagship shop would remain closed.
Its website continued to display regular hours for all three Ghirardelli Square locations.
The closure escalated a contract dispute centered on employee health insurance and a 6% surcharge added to customers’ bills.
Local 2 accused Ghirardelli of bargaining in bad faith by refusing to provide information about how much money the surcharge generates while proposing changes that the union says would weaken workers’ health coverage.
The union asked customers not to patronize Ghirardelli locations while workers are picketing.
Ghirardelli disputed the union’s characterization of the negotiations but did not address specific questions about the surcharge.
“We value and respect our employees and the important contributions they make to Ghirardelli.
We are currently in active contract negotiations with the union and are committed to bargaining in good faith.
Our main focus right now is on reaching an agreement that supports our employees and ensures the long-term success of our business,” spokesperson Aimee Bianca said in a statement.
The dispute highlights a long-running source of confusion and frustration for San Francisco diners: surcharges described as covering employee health care or other city-required labor costs.
San Francisco does not require restaurants or retailers to add such a fee.
Businesses choose whether to impose one.
But when a covered employer says a surcharge is intended to pay for obligations under the city’s Health Care Security Ordinance, it must report annually how much the fee generated and how much it spent on covered workers’ health care, according to the city’s Office of Labor Standards Enforcement.
If collections exceed qualifying health care spending, the excess must ultimately be spent on those employees’ health care.
The Office of Labor Standards Enforcement did not immediately respond Thursday to questions about whether Ghirardelli had reported the surcharge or whether the city had reviewed the company’s compliance.
Unite Here said negotiations began in May 2025 and have failed to produce a new agreement.
Alicia Tamayo, a stocker who has worked at the shop for 22 years, said she relies on the union health plan to cover herself and her two daughters.
“They charge customers an extra 6% fee that’s supposed to be for our healthcare, but they won’t tell us how much they earn from that fee,” Tamayo said in a statement released by the union.
“Now they want to cut our health insurance.
My two daughters are on my insurance.
I’m not going to let them take our union healthcare plan away from me and my daughters.”
The union did not release the company’s full health care proposal.
The Original Ghirardelli Chocolate & Ice Cream Shop is one of several Ghirardelli businesses at the waterfront shopping complex near Fisherman’s Wharf.
The company says the original ice cream shop opened in 1966, although the chocolate maker traces its San Francisco history to 1852.
The union said the shop employs about 50 people and is the only unionized Ghirardelli location in San Francisco.
Local 2 also said the shop’s workers had not gone on strike since 1984.
Swiss chocolate company Lindt & Sprüngli owns Ghirardelli.
It was not immediately clear whether the shop would remain open during the strike.
Ghirardelli’s website continued to list the location and its regular hours Thursday morning.
Speakers
5speakers40%attributed speech389writer words
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100%flagged-word coverageAlicia Tamayo
95 attributed words36% of attributed speech66% writer coverage
Attribution is sentence-level. Pattern percentages are calculated only from words assigned to that voice.
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