How can anyone nurture a business in such a climate? Rosebraugh didn't have it easy, in part because his restaurant was bound to a troubling reality: Fred Rosebraugh, Craig's dad, earned the money to finance Calendula by manufacturing hydraulic valves for tractors and lawn mowers. The elder Rosebraugh founded a company called Compact Controls in his suburban Portland basement in 1977; he retired 24 years later after selling his company, which had 270 employees and $35 million in annual revenue, for an undisclosed sum.
Per Portland (and ELF) protocol, Craig Rosebraugh should have publicly renounced lawn mowers--lawns, even. Instead, he spoke of his father fondly and in defensive tones. "My dad's a moderate Republican," he told me. "He voted for [George W.] Bush the first time, but then he deeply regretted it. If you get down to it, he believes in education and welfare--he really believes in those things. In his industry, he was a leader. He was very responsible in making sure that toxic chemicals were disposed of properly."
When Rosebraugh was subpoenaed by Congress in 2002, he brought his dad with him to Washington. "He flew out to support me," he told me. "That was one of my greatest moments with him--for him to be witness to the everyday proceedings of the U.S. government."
At a House subcommittee hearing, led by Colorado Republican Scott McInnis, a panel asked Rosebraugh probing questions about his links to ecoterrorism. He intoned versions of "I'll take the Fifth Amendment" 54 times.
I asked Rosebraugh if I could talk to his dad, and he grew protective. "You can try," he said, "but I'm going to tell him to ignore you because I trust you about as much as I trust any other reporter I've dealt with, which is not at all."
Rosebraugh's father ignored my calls; I never spoke to him.
When Calendula opened in January 2004, Rosebraugh had 18 employees, including an executive chef. He managed them as I imagined his dad would have, as de facto CEO. He called mandatory staff meetings and sat at the head of the table. He distributed detailed employee manuals and enforced a dress code, insisting that his servers wear "business casual" clothing. He began to rankle his underlings. "He was working against our collective flow," a server named Abigail Barella would later write on indymedia. "His ego often blocked communication."
Andrew Hodgdon, also a server, was more outspoken. "Working for Craig was an altogether negative experience that just consumed my precious energy," Hodgdon, a professional actor, told me. "We had to wear these stiff black button-down shirts that were tight in the collar, and Craig--he was always watching you. You were always on thin ice with him. He'd say things like, 'I've told you numerous times you need to iron your shirt. And button your top button--this isn't a sex appeal kind of place.' I started hating my job, and others were hating it too. I said, 'Craig, there's some s-- going down, bro."
Indeed there was. By midsummer, just six months after launching his business, Rosebraugh had lost almost $100,000 of his parents' money. By his own reckoning, Calendula was mismanaged. He had too many employees, and the chef cared not a whit about finances. "He ordered anything he wanted to," Rosebraugh recalls ruefully. "I mean, produce shipped in from all over the world, out of season. The walk-in freezer was a gold mine of exotic fruits and organic nuts."
On July 28 Rosebraugh took a bold step: He reduced servers' hourly wage, before tips, to $7.05 from $8.00. He also made it clear that health care benefits would be a long time coming for his employees. Manager Katharine Atkinson teed off on Rosebraugh and, she wrote on indymedia, she got nowhere: "When I told Craig that the servers were disappointed, he said, 'Let them quit! If they don't like it, they can work somewhere else. This isn't a utopia, it's a business!"
Within two days, Rosebraugh fired Atkinson, Hodgdon, and Barella, along with one other waiter, James Horn. In turn, these four employees allied with an all-but-forgotten union, the Industrial Workers of the World, also known as the Wobblies, who 90-odd years ago shook fear into the titans of industry. Today the Wobblies can claim only 1,000 members worldwide. In Portland, however, they have serious street cred and clout. One night in August 2004, they ambushed Rosebraugh at Calendula. Led by their union rep, Pete Beaman, the striking workers stalked up the steps of the silvery porch and demanded their jobs back. Make no mistake: This was now civil war--and Rosebraugh was steamed.
He told the strikers that they were trespassing. He refused to give the Wobblies their jobs back, and he threatened to call the police. (That's right: the donut eaters that Rosebraugh has called "the thugs of the state.") Then, as a coup de grâce, he made one final supremely corporate gesture: He issued a self-explanatory press release. He spent $1,650 to place, in an alternative newspaper called Willamette Week, a full-page rejoinder to the strikers, who, he said, "received nothing but patience and respect from me." Calendula's servers, he said, "set their own schedules and received any time off as requested....The insinuation that I sit back in my office counting stacks of money while the 'wage slaves' do all the work is both insulting and laughable."
In the same issue, the newspaper named Rosebraugh "Rogue of the Week," noting that, during the restaurant's first two months, he made his four-block commute to work in an SUV--a Toyota 4Runner. Rosebraugh, who now drives a Honda hybrid, couldn't quite fathom the indignation against him. "Why do they single me out?" he asked me. "They hold me up to some superhuman standard. Most people drive their car to work, don't they? Seriously, who the f-- cares what I drive?"
