Franchise Opportunities in Long Beach, CA

Workers at two Southern California Starbucks locations, one in Lakewood and one in Long Beach, voted to join a union Friday, bringing the total number of unionized Starbucks locations in California to four.

The votes came days after the first union victories for Starbucks workers in California at two Santa Cruz stores. They are part of a national campaign to organize the coffee giant that has spread rapidly across the country over the last six months.

Twenty-four workers at the store near Candlewood Street and Lakewood Boulevard in Lakewood voted to join Workers United, with one voting against. At the Starbucks location by Redondo Avenue and 7th Street in Long Beach, 13 workers voted unanimously in favor of the union.

Workers from both stores gathered at the Western States Regional Joint Board’s office by MacArthur Park in Los Angeles on Friday to hear the results as ballots were tallied. WSRJB is a chapter of Workers United representing California workers. Workers United is an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union.

Josie Serrano, a barista at the Long Beach store, said working conditions at Starbucks have deteriorated over the years, with baristas having to juggle more roles and tasks.

“When I started four years ago I didn’t have to do such stressful work,” Serrano said.

Serrano hopes unionization will improve work conditions. “Now we have something really bright to look forward to.”

Starbucks spokesperson Reggie Borges said in an emailed statement that the company respects workers’ right to organize, but it prefers to address workplace concerns directly.

“We are listening and learning from the partners in these stores as we always do across the country,” Borges said. “From the beginning, we’ve been clear in our belief that we are better together as partners, without a union between us, and that conviction has not changed.”

Workers at the two stores announced their intent to unionize on March 7, writing in open letters that they felt overworked, understaffed and underpaid.

Workers at the Lakewood store wrote in their open letter that raises have been inadequate and that there is no clear roadmap for promotions. They said they are seeking greater job security by ending at-will employment, a policy that means they can be terminated without cause.

The Lakewood letter, signed by 19 workers, praised their store’s manager but said that through unionizing they hope to change structural problems within the company that are “out of her hands.”

The Long Beach letter cited instances of the company firing pro-union workers and challenges it filed with the federal labor board to union petitions — which workers described as attempts at delaying the electoral process.

“Our partners are disappointed by how the company has treated those that have spoken up,” workers at the Long Beach store wrote.

In total, 84 Starbucks stores have held ballot counts, said National Labor Relations Board spokesperson Kayla Blado. Of stores that have held elections, 69 have voted for a union and nine have voted against. At six stores, the results are too close to be determined and will be litigated in the coming months.

Elections at 49 stores have been officially certified for a union to represent the workers.

Starbucks operates nearly 9,000 stores in the United States.

The Long Beach Public Library Foundation will host a celebration ceremony Friday, May 13, dedicating the new children’s library to the John and Helen Apostle Foundation.

The event will be held at KidSpace in the Billie Jean King Main Library at 11:15 AM to commemorate a $1 million dollar donation from the late couple’s foundation to support the development of the library. The funding was the most significant pledge amount the Library Foundation has received since its New Main Campaign.

The New Main Campaign, co-chaired by former tennis star Billie Jean King and City Mayor Robert Garcia, raised over $3.3 million dollars for technology, programs, and enhancements for KidSpace. This comes along with the support of over 500 community members, including local book clubs, foundations, and other organizations.

“It comes when Long Beach youth need support to improve their reading capabilities and succeed in school. We are proud to honor John and Helen Apostle with this beautiful display in the Billie Jean King Main Library,” said Veronica Dávalos, Executive Director and CEO of the Library Foundation.

According to a report from the Long Beach Unified School District, released in February of 2022, during the first in-person school year since the pandemic began, over 60 percent of elementary and middle school students read below grade level.

Funding will enable the library to hire new bilingual staff who can design and implement new literature programs for kids in Spanish and English, such as Dive into Reading/Sumérgete a Leer, Circle of Stories/Círculo de Cuentos, and Cuentos y Cantos.

Half of the funds will be used to establish the John and Helen Apostle Endowed Fund for Children. The $1 million gift had been donated over the course of ten years.

“Helen Apostle had been giving over the course of her lifetime to the Library Foundation, and even after her death, we were still delighted to know that she was still giving at a much greater level,” said Erica Bradley, Deputy Executive Director of Development for the Library Foundation.

The Apostle Foundation has been a contributing partner with the Long Beach Community Foundation for over 15 years. Its mission is to improve the lives of residents of Long Beach, CA, through the support of nonprofit organizations and programs in social services, education, and arts and sciences, particularly those that impact children.

The KidSpace will display a plaque dedicated to John and Helen Apostle and a new art mural depicting dolphins leaping through waves, in addition to the latest Storytime theater.

All KidSpace resources are available during operating hours. Visit the Library’s website at longbeach.gov/library for information about additional library programs and events.

By Carter Williams II

Photo credit: Long Beach Public Library Foundation

The Long Beach Water Commission may upgrade the city’s water shortage level next week, which would bring with it new restrictions on when residents can water landscaping.

Updating the city’s water shortage stage comes as California heads toward its third straight year of drought. The proposal to go to Stage 2, which would limit landscape irrigation to two days per week year-round, would take the city back to water conservation rules not seen since June 2016.

The new stage would include already existing prohibitions like watering within 48 hours of rainfall or having excessive runoff from sprinklers or letting a hose run while washing a vehicle.

They would also limit summertime irrigation to two days a week instead of three. Summer is defined by the department as the months of April through the end of September.

The commission was set to adopt the new rules at its April 14 meeting before a discussion about which days residents should be allowed to water their yards and plants derailed the vote, pushing it to Thursday, April 28.

Bob Shannon, the president of the commission, was the biggest objector and said that to pick two days would be viewed as arbitrary by residents and said the board should just limit it to two days and let residents decide when those two days are.

“I just don’t think we have the moral right to tell people what day of the week to water on,” Shannon said.

Shannon also opposed fining residents who do run afoul of the new rules and encouraging neighbors to tell on neighbors for overwatering. Shannon said the department should be seeking voluntary compliance from the community.

“We don’t have water cops around here,” Shannon said.

His stance received some pushback from water department staff for the potential effect it could have on marketing materials that are already set up to inform customers of the days that outdoor irrigation is allowed (Tuesday and Thursday) and because it would make it difficult to tell who is watering twice a week if people are watering on different days.

Commissioner Frank Martinez said it was important not to have “squishy little rules” with something as important as water conservation and agreed that having the board set the days will help keep people on patterns and help department employees spot rule breakers.

“If we’re going to enact rules, we need to have some punitive measures in there,” Martinez said. “We’re going to have people who are flouting these rules and we need to be able to do something about it.”

The department has very rarely fined account holders, instead relying on an educational approach to bring people into compliance. That can include warning letters and visits to individual homes to make them aware of the rules and the potential penalties, something the water department says has been successful in the past.

Lauren Gold, a spokesperson for the Water Department, said that penalties would only be assessed after extensive outreach to customers to gain compliance. Under the State 2 shortage fine schedule, a first violation of the water restrictions would be $75 with the fine going as high as $900 per violation after the fourth violation.

Gold said the Stage 2 restrictions would stay in place for as long as the board decides it is necessary. If conditions improve, it could vote to move back to Stage 1, but if conditions worsen, the city could move to Stage 3. A move to that stage could be forced by an executive order from the governor or if the city’s water supply is shown to be 40% to 50% less than demand.

According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, a website that compiles data from multiple federal organizations, all of Los Angeles County is in a state of severe drought and the state as a whole has seen drought conditions worsen since the start of 2022.

Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order last month calling for water suppliers to adopt rules to save 20% of water from historical demands, which could mean 2013 levels for Long Beach. Newsom’s conservation mark could eventually rise to 30%.

Other cities in the region could be facing stricter rules in the coming months because they’re more dependent on water from the state’s water project, which supplies Southern California cities with water from Northern California.

The Metropolitan Water District, which distributes that water, is considering its own rules that would limit outdoor irrigation to one day per week and eventually zero days if drought conditions worsen.

The affected areas could include Los Angeles and parts of Ventura and Riverside Counties, however, Long Beach’s ability to pump local groundwater and access water from the Colorado River is allowing it to set its own rules, for now.

Water Department General Manager Chris Garner warned that the department could get direction from the district and the state to take more drastic measures as the state’s water situation gets worse, which could include more restrictions as the weather gets hotter and drier.

Garner signaled his support for the board setting the days for outdoor irrigation rather than letting residents choose on their own.

“There’s going to be a point where we’re going to have to start enforcing and at that point we’ll have to designate clear parameters for when people can irrigate,” Garner said.

The commission is expected to vote on the new water storage restrictions at its April 28 meeting that is scheduled for 9 a.m. The Water Commission meets at 1800 E. Wardlow Road.

Editors note: This story has been updated with additional information from the Long Beach Water Department.

Water agencies that serve 27 million people and 750,000 acres of farmland will get just 5% of what they’ve requested this year from state supplies beyond what’s needed for critical activities such as drinking and bathing.

Long Beach water customers could receive up to $9M in bill credits after city’s lost legal battle over water, sewer fees

After the city lost a court case involving its charging access fees to the Long Beach Water Department, the Water Commission will vote on whether to use up to $9 million out of the $30.8 million it will get back from the city to create bill credits for customers.

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TheThe green deck that hangs on the back of the pro shop at Bixby Village Golf Course in Long Beach ebbs and flows with people across an afternoon. The low clouds and coastal breezes mean customers linger longer, popping open cans of cheap beer and swapping stories about life on the course. There’s no fancy clubhouse at this 42-year-old nine-hole par three course, just friends laughing, reliving old tales, and hanging out. Stay long enough, and one of Dave Trepanier’s burgers will find its way in front of you, too.

Everyone who stops at the Bixby Village Golf Course gets a burger eventually — or they should. Trepanier’s airy, thicker-than-smashed backyard beef burgers are not only keeping golfers around at the tiny executive course with the worn fairways, they’re also drawing in a whole new clientele of young, hungry Long Beach diners who are always in search of the next great meal. Soon enough they’re here, eyeing the long flattop grill of the golf course patio restaurant known simply as Crack.

“When I first got here, it was just an old sandwich shop,” says Trepanier, talking fast and sporting slicked-back salt and pepper hair. He’s always joking around with customers, except when it comes to his food. The space he now occupies, one-third of a small building just off the parking lot, sat empty for seven years before Trepanier started cooking. Getting people to know he’d even arrived was serious work. “I couldn’t get these old golfers off their oatmeal to come up and eat with me,” he jokes, “so I took a flattop grill out to the deck and started putting onions and bacon on it, just to permeate the course with smell. Then I started with a $5 burger; I had to have something when they got here.”

In just over a year, Trepanier has gone from bacon lures to Long Beach’s hottest new underground burger. His place has almost no signage and sits inside another business. But the whispers about his hidden burger are out. “Now 80 percent of my business is non-golfers,” he says, making sure to point out his five-star Yelp rating. “I don’t like Yelp, and they don’t like me, but the numbers don’t lie.”

Nor do the burgers. At $12 a pop, each is stacked with well-griddled beef, seared to a backyard burnish. There’s an opening swipe of the loose patties that helps to sear the meat, but everything else is in the details. “It’s not my meat, it’s what I don’t do to the burger,” says Trepanier, “I don’t touch it.” The finished result is thick and hefty, far from the paper-thin smashed versions around greater Los Angeles these days. The loose form means lots of crags and spots for fat to pool; it’s a style similar to Venice staple Hinano Cafe or Hawkin’s House of Burgers in Watts. The shredded lettuce and thick tomato slice nod to LA’s burger traditions as much as hot pop-up Yellow Paper Burger, but it’s Trepanier’s slow-cooked sweet bacon and onion jam that rounds the burgers into form.

“My palate is salt and sweet,” says Trepanier, who — after a year as a one-man operation, including a stint doing breakfast foods — only now is starting to let someone else cook the meat. He keeps a close eye, alternating between telling bawdy jokes to customers and giving stern advice to the cook. It’s been hard for him to let go, he admits, because the restaurant is his whole world at the moment, and because cooking has always been a place for him to find perspective. He spent much of his childhood cooking for himself while his mother worked long hours; he even remembers getting a small set of pots and pans as a birthday gift. Then he grew up and moved on, falling into blue-collar jobs in the metal industry before life took a turn.

“I spent three years in prison,” says Trepanier. “I was a derelict, a drug user, and I learned how to manufacture. I was in a small camp in Baker and I needed a job there, so I got one in the kitchen. It’s where I wanted to spend my time.”

“I joke with customers,” he says. “They ask me where I learned to cook and I say ‘In prison,” and they just laugh because they don’t really know.” Then comes the punchline, for him: “Manufacturing [drugs] was just another cooking job, but it’s one I don’t get to brag about.”

Now Trepanier gets to brag about Crack, this little up-from-nothing burger restaurant that’s really just a golf course deck. He gets to brag about his Ortega burger with hatch chiles, his thick, rich bacon jam and chipotle burger called the Dirty (a playful nickname for his best friend and biggest supporter), and his growing customer base. Trepanier sells around 100 burgers a day, Tuesday through Sunday, along with specials like prime rib sandwiches, wings, and whatever else he wants to whip up — and those numbers are growing.

“I want this to be a little hidden gem of a place,” he says as burger fans and golfers mill about, eating and drinking and trading tales. “I just love that people come in and say that it’s like eating in their friend’s backyard.”

Crack sells from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Tuesday through Sunday, at the Bixby Village Golf Course at 6180 Bixby Village Drive in Long Beach.

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Below is a list of the top and leading Vets in Long Beach, CA. To help you find the best Vets located near you in Long Beach, CA, we put together our own list based on this rating points list.

Long Beach, CA’s Best Vets:

The top-rated Vets in Long Beach, CA are:

Ambassador Long Beach Veterinary Hospital is a prime veterinary hospital based in Long Beach treating all kinds of conditions for your pets. This veterinary hospital has a team of vets that are passionate and highly qualified. Ambassador Long Beach Veterinary Hospital has been serving the Long Beach area for over 20 years. Other areas they cover include Los Alamitos, Signal Hill, and Lakewood. Their veterinarians will always go above and beyond for your pets. They will make sure they get back to 100%. Looking for a reliable vet in Long Beach? Consider Ambassador Long Beach Veterinary Hospital today for your pet’s needs.

Products/Services: General wellness, comprehensive pharmacy, urgent care, geriatric care, nutrition counseling, dentistry, advanced diagnostics, pain management

LOCATION: Address: 2251 E Carson St, Long Beach, CA 90807 Phone: (562) 427-2889 Website: ambassadorvet.com

REVIEWS: Dr. Sam and his staff are wonderful-kind, compassionate, professional, and knowledgeable. They saved my cat, Fredo. We are forever grateful. I have referred them to several of my friends and will every opportunity I have. – Theresa Brunella

Primary Care Animal Hospital understands that your pets deserve the best care. This veterinary hospital listens and cares about you and your pet. Primary Care Animal Hospital is very passionate and driven when it comes to pet care. Their veterinarians are hardworking pet lovers themselves. They treat pets as if they are family. These veterinarians have years of experience and are pet care experts. Services range from general wellness, pharmacy, dentistry, and advanced diagnostics. Looking for a reliable vet in Long Beach? Primary Care Animal Hospital offers top-tier pet care and more.

Products/Services: General wellness, comprehensive pharmacy, urgent care, geriatric care, nutrition counseling, dentistry, advanced diagnostics, pain management

LOCATION: Address: 2200 N Lakewood Blvd, Long Beach, CA 90815 Phone: (562) 274-7776 Website: primaryvetcare.com

REVIEWS: Excellent care and Customer Service. All Veterinarians and Staff are kind, professional, very caring, and helpful. I can’t think of anything that could have made our experience better. Always pleased with Primary Care’s professionalism and care for our Fur Babies. – Anita Wills

Broadway Pet Clinic offers excellence when it comes to veterinary care. This veterinary clinic offers true value for its services. Broadway Pet Clinic’s team works closely together to provide the best care possible. These veterinarians are honest, respectful, and have the integrity you want in your vet. They will go above and beyond to make sure your pet is properly treated. Services include physical exams, in-house blood work, dental, and more. Want to have the best veterinary care for your pet? Long Beach’s Broadway Pet Clinic offers amazing value at affordable rates.

Products/Services: General wellness, comprehensive pharmacy, urgent care, geriatric care, nutrition counseling, dentistry, advanced diagnostics, pain management

LOCATION: Address: 1058 E Broadway, Long Beach, CA 90802 Phone: (562) 432-1413 Website: broadwaypetclinic.com

REVIEWS: The Dr. who operates this clinic is amazing. Never seen anyone who handles our kitties so calmly and easily. Wouldn’t want to go anywhere else. Thanks for taking care of our two kitties! – Austin Jones

Long Beach Animal Hospital is made up of dedicated veterinarians that offer top-notch service. This animal hospital is highly rated and reviewed by satisfied customers. Long Beach Animal Hospital works had to earn the trust of pet owners across Long Beach. They specialize in various services that deliver the best possible outcome. Services include emergency, diagnostic testing, house calls, surgical care, and more. Other services like boarding, pet food nutrition, microchipping, and laser therapy are also available. Looking for a recognized vet in Long Beach? Long Beach Animal Hospital’s services are top-tier.

Products/Services: General wellness, comprehensive pharmacy, urgent care, geriatric care, nutrition counseling, dentistry, advanced diagnostics, pain management

LOCATION: Address: 3816 E Anaheim St, Long Beach, CA 90804 Phone: (562) 434-9966 Website: lbah.com

REVIEWS: Dr. Yamamoto was excellent with our rabbit, Dove. The staff was professional and helpful. We got an appointment on short notice. The prices were fair. We are very happy. The best vet we have found for rabbits. We appreciate them. – Nancy Griffith

Cats & Dogs Animal Hospital offers full-service veterinary experience in Long Beach, California. This animal hospital provides excellent comprehensive care and treatments. Cats & Dogs Animal Hospital has been highly rated by the likes of Long Beach Post and Press-Telegram. This pet care facility is considered one of the best in the area. Services include vaccinations, dental care, online pharmacy, and more. Their vets are some of the best California has to offer. They will go the extra mile to provide your pet with the best possible care. Are you looking for a top-notch vet hospital? Check out Cats & Dogs Animal Hospital for their amazing service and competitive rates.

Products/Services: General wellness, comprehensive pharmacy, urgent care, geriatric care, nutrition counseling, dentistry, advanced diagnostics, pain management

LOCATION: Address: 627 Redondo Ave, Long Beach, CA 90814 Phone: (562) 439-4228 Website: catsanddogsah.com

REVIEWS: As always, the staff took great care of my dog while he was there. They truly care about your pet and are very professional. The vets are awesome and all the staff is friendly, welcoming, and helpful. I wouldn’t take my babies anywhere else! – Michelle Silvey

Alain Atkins is the senior editor for Kev’s Best. Alain has been working as a journalist for nearly a decade having published pieces in many print and digital publications including the Argus Leader and the Huffing Post. Alain is based in St Louis and covers issues affecting his city and state. When he’s not busy in the newsroom, Alain enjoys backpacking.