Rolled and Roasted’s history of blatant transphobia, mistreatment of workers and unsafe conditions lie behind a supposed local business success story
Above: A Haywood Street billboard advertising Rolled and Roasted alongside other local businesses. Showing how deep the rot runs in multiple businesses in town, the billboard below features the art of accused rapist Jonas Gerard.
On Jan. 27, Asheville-based transgender advocate and organizer Lauryn Reeder shared an image depicting bathroom doors adorned with XX and XY chromosome signs on social media. The images were taken in the then-unopened North Asheville location of Rolled and Roasted, a gimmicky Asheville Mall ice cream stand looking to start up a full restaurant and bar in the spot previously occupied by beloved café Edna’s of Asheville. Her intent was to warn the many members of Asheville’s nonbinary and transgender community that this location may not be safe to patronize. The image shared recommended avoiding the store and perhaps leaving reviews on their social media page in order to raise awareness.
It is important to note here that members of the local nonbinary and transgender community necessarily rely on such messaging as we work to navigate public life in and around this area, in much the same way that we rely upon each other for housing and employment recommendations; we are often our only reliable resources with regard to such matters. So if one of us learns that a given location or business might not be safe to visit or patronize, we have a duty to alert others. This reflects the basic reality of existing as a nonbinary and/or transgender person in Asheville, in North Carolina, in the United States, in the often unrepentantly hostile society in which we strive to continue living and working.
The XX bathroom sign, glimpsed from a photo taken in the then-unopened Rolled and Roasted North Asheville location
It is also worth noting that a given person’s sex chromosomes are not readily apparent at a glance, and can only be truly verified through the obtainment a karyotype, which itself is a prohibitively expensive undertaking; karyotyping costs upwards of $10,000 in the United States. But frankly, the view that all of human gender and sex is determined by the mere presence or absence of a penis and/or Y chromosome — and that these two traits are always concurrent and in agreement with one another — betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of both human sex determination as well as the complex nature of biological processes in general.
The insistence that all seven billion-plus people in the world can easily be sorted into two discrete, chromosomal categories is willfully ignorant at best and mean-spirited at worst. For nonbinary and transgender people, that insistence is commonly and rightly taken as an indication of a bigoted and hateful perspective, though Ashevillians finding themselves outside of those communities would also benefit greatly from the recognition that a comfort with transphobic language and arguments is but one symptom of a hierarchical perspective on humanity, in which some people are considered to be “more human” and thus more worthy of rights and protections than are others. Another symptom of this view is a profound contempt for the rights of workers. In time, Rolled and Roasted’s owners would prove to have both in abundance.
NC House Bill 2 and its sequel HB 142 exemplified the tie between transphobia to a disdain for workers’ rights. The bills were largely sold as an attempt by the state to limit the access of nonbinary and transgender people, specifically transfeminine people, from public life but they were also written to include prohibitions of minimum wage increases and changes to labor regulations. Like the so-called “Motorcycle Safety Bill” of 2013, which closed down numerous womens’ care facilities across the state, HB 2 and HB 142 successfully used the presumed transphobia of North Carolinians to also further attack the rights of workers within the state.
Something rotten in the cafe
Reeder’s post attracted 33 shares and 198 comments on Facebook, where it is still publicly available at the time of publication, and though many of those engagements came from grateful community members, a number were left by owners and employees of Rolled and Roasted, who seemed to take the post as a defamatory and very personal attack. So before their North Asheville location had even opened owners Jesse Fein, Elisha Lewis and Abigail Nichole made evident their collective penchant for both reflexive threats of legal action and bold, demonstrably false proclamations: as the former two threatened defamation lawsuits against members of our local community and their allies, Nichole began telling inquirers that Reeder had deleted her still-publicly available post “when the person who made it realized they wrongly accused RnR.”
Claims were put forward that the owners and staff had received threats of violence, though no evidence of this was ever provided. Lewis also insisted that the bathroom signs were left over from Edna’s of Asheville, a curious declaration indeed to anyone who had ever actually visited the now-closed café, which proudly featured gender neutral restrooms. Whether the chromosome bathroom doors had indeed always been at the location, however obscured as Lewis had claimed, the sense that a welcoming and accepting business had been replaced by one utterly devoid of those values could not be shaken so easily.
Edna’s anti-HB2 social media post, compared with Lewis’ comments
Eventually Lewis realized, or was perhaps advised, that alienating the nonbinary and transgender community and our allies might not be the smartest way to kick off the opening of their new restaurant and accordingly adopted a more conciliatory tone. Several community members active in Reeder’s thread were pleased and relieved by this apparent change of heart, a result which frankly makes evident the value of responding to public concern with humility and understanding. Sharon Hanson, Tranzmission’s administrative director, reached out to Lewis to gauge interest in a sensitivity training with the organization, which she was in the position to coordinate. Though Lewis dismissed the offer as “non-essential,” the exchange was amicable enough. The pricing of the hypothetical sensitivity training was never discussed.
Lewis’ heel-face turn and subsequent correspondence with Hanson
The next two months passed relatively quietly. The Merrimon location of Rolled and Roasted opened to rapturous press coverage, and the owners were gleefully embraced by Asheville’s well-established culture of blind boosterism. Even so, online reviews from disappointed patrons were steadily trickling out, depicting a desolate and unclean venue populated solely by a handful of listless workers serving improperly heated food, selected from an apparently aspirational menu, to those who dared wander within its doors.
On March 1 an employee, who’s requested anonymity for fear of retribution, began work at the Merrimon location. Her first paycheck was received in the form of a handwritten check over a month later, on April 3, with no pay stub provided. Without a pay stub, which employers are legally required to provide, the employee had no way of knowing what hours she was paid for, nor how much had been taken for taxes. She was concerned that her share of tips had been withheld from her, and required verification that this was not the case. When she brought this concern to Fein, she was told that, by state law, a pay stub could not be printed out (this is untrue) and that it would be mailed to her instead.
She then asked Fein and Lewis why her pay stubs could not be uploaded to the company’s payroll app, and the owners provided an email address belonging to a third party who would then assure her that her pay stubs would be uploaded to the app promptly. Her final check from Rolled and Roasted was delivered two weeks later, and two days late, and though a pay stub for that second check was visible on the app the stub for the first paycheck remained absent. When the employee attempted to call the owners to inquire as to the status of this elusive documentation, she discovered that her number had been blocked.
Correspondence between employee and third party over her paycheck
At this point, she began reaching out to legal representation specializing in wage disputes. She was repeatedly informed that although she had a case, the fact that the total amount of withheld wages totaled less that $1,000 meant that it was not worth their time to represent her. Unfortunately, it takes far less than $1,000 in lost funds to make or break the life of a working Ashevillian.
Undeterred in her quest for accountability, she then reached out to local activists including Reeder, myself, and the Asheville Solidarity Network, a working class collective that has organized around housing, labor and police violence. We were provided with an astoundingly thorough collection of over 60 images. Among these were photos taken from the employee’s phone on March 29 as well as screen captures taken from both Facebook and the business’ Slack chat. Taken together, these images depict a dangerous and hostile work environment, in which food is improperly stored and refrigerated, and necessary inquiries as to the status of late pay and apparently stolen tips are met with tossed off excuses if not outright indifference and disdain.
Several of these images are reproduced here, and it is important to note that, had the whistle-blowing employee not thought to capture and keep them when she did, she would have found herself among the ever-growing ranks of abused and discarded Asheville service workers left without recourse for poor treatment at the hands of employers who believe the town’s misguided culture of boosterism is sufficient to protect their interests from public accountability.
The following photographs depict the work environment at Rolled and Roasted’s Merrimon location as of March 29.
Photos depicting the backroom, drive-through station, outlet and plumbing
Food storage and refrigeration was shown to be of a similarly haphazard nature.
Photos depicting the freezer and storage of breaded chicken patties
Excerpts from Rolled and Roasted’s work chat depict a workplace in which workers, many of them minors apparently unaware of their rights, are expected to accept late pay as a necessary condition of their continued employment.
Correspondence between Lewis and employees regarding late pay
Also from the Slack chat, keeping the store properly stocked and staffed seems to be an insurmountable obstacle, further contributing to the stressful and precarious nature of employment at Rolled and Roasted.
Correspondence between Fein, Lewis and employees regarding issues with stocking and staffing the north location
Given these conditions, it is not surprising to see employees coming forward with questions and concerns. However, like many of his cohort, Lewis seems to enjoy slipping between the roles of bully and victim as it suits him in any given moment.
A statement from Lewis to employees
An online campaign for public accountability began in earnest on the afternoon of April 19 with posts, collecting various images provided by the employee, made by activists involved in the effort. In response to posts by Reeder and myself, Lewis again chose to threaten a frivolous lawsuit, this time in the form of a cease and desist letter apparently taken from an online template and sent to Ezekiel Christopoulos, Tranzmission’s executive director (the organization happens to employ Reeder and myself as program directors). His goal seems to have been to startle our principal employer into reprimanding us for the misdeed of functioning as activists outside of the organization. It should be noted that Tranzmission had never mentioned Rolled and Roasted in any social media posts or statements at this point, nor had there ever been any internal effort or intent to do so.
Cease and desist letter from Lewis to Tranzmission
I contacted Tranzmission regarding Rolled and Roasted’s actions and spoke with Christopoulos, who had a phone conversation with Lewis promptly following the personally issued order’s electronic delivery. Christopoulos confirmed that, over the course of this call, Lewis clarified that his email represented a personal request from himself to Reeder and Estelle to end their efforts to draw awareness to Lewis’ business practices and person. As per Christopoulos, it was also conveyed to Lewis in this call that activism carried out independently by Tranzmission’s program directors does not represent the work of Tranzmission as an organization.
The notion that a given employer is responsible for controlling employees’ social media activity outside of work seemed to suggest a lack of familiarity on the part of Lewis with regard to state and federal labor law. In response to a Facebook post by the whistleblowing employee, Lewis makes clear that he does not, in fact, understand labor and wage regulations, proudly believing as he does that tips are to be distributed solely at his own fickle and capricious whim and that employees can’t discuss their working conditions (their right to do so is, in many cases, protected by federal law). In fact, with a few very limited exceptions, all tips must be distributed to the workers who receive them. To do otherwise is, even under N.C.’s laws, wage theft.
Lewis’ assertion that tips are not owed to employees
On the Asheville Solidarity Network’s post, which went on to become the most shared in the collective’s history, one employee helpfully clarified that they, as well, have suffered late pay while employed by Rolled and Roasted.
A fellow employee’s inability to obtain timely payment
Over the course of the weekend that followed, the campaign for public accountability succeeded in raising awareness of Rolled and Roasted’s frankly indefensible and illegal business practices. Though far too few Ashevillians are all that bothered by transphobia — given that they don’t believe it impacts them or anyone they particularly care for — it should be noted that bigotry never occurs in a vacuum. Late pay and stolen tips tend to signal alarm in a town so dependent upon service industry workers, who are often regarded as easily disposed of and replaced by their employers, and certainly Rolled and Roasted is far from the only local business to mistreat its workers. But Ashevillians should not be so surprised that an employer which has shown itself to be hostile to one vulnerable population is similarly dismissive of another.
Toss health code violations on top of that, and we’re left with a business the practices of which have potential to disturb a significant portion of the public, were they so fortunate as to be informed of the fact.
Because the owners had seen fit to deactivate user reviews on their Facebook page, concerned Ashevillians had no option but to comment on posts made by that page in order to make their apprehensions known. These comments received prompt, though plainly disingenuous, responses. In one instance, Rolled and Roasted suggested that the whistleblowing employee’s photos were taken by the owner prior to opening; in another, the business instead claims that the photos were taken by the employee before opening, which is odd considering the store had been open weeks before she started working there.
Similarly disingenuous were their responses to inquiries regarding comments on Rolled and Roasted’s March 27 health inspection, in which Edna’s of Asheville was blamed, incredibly, for the improper storage of food and poor upkeep of equipment evident in photographs taken on March 29. The employee was also accused of working at the Mellow Mushroom, and coordinating a similar campaign against that establishment, though she states that she has never been employed by the Mellow Mushroom and no evidence to the contrary was ever presented. When I and other activists attempted to correct and address these assertions, the comments were removed almost immediately.
Contradictory claims made by Rolled and Roasted in response to criticism on their Facebook page
The health inspection itself, the results of which are publicly available on the Buncombe County website, paints a rather damning picture of a business struggling to operate in accordance with basic health regulations. Rolled and Roasted’s explanation of their score and the comments attached conveniently and confusingly attributes their lack of a health policy to the long hair of the whistleblowing employee (here referred to as “the girl,” whose professionalism is demeaned as her very real concerns are dismissed as the result of some drug-induced hysteria), and the issues with improper food storage and refrigeration are stated to be somehow due to the fact that they are not in possession of a walk-in freezer. They apparently did not see any need to explain why the owners believe that a score of 95.5 percent is worth bragging about.
The sanitation score awarded to Rolled and Roasted’s Merrimon location, with comments and the owners’ explanation
Rolled and retaliatory
Perhaps realizing that replying to, and then removing, individual comments and concerns one at a time was not a terribly efficient means of establishing their plainly absurd and contradictory narrative, Rolled and Roasted published a retaliatory statement (since removed) on the evening of Sunday, April 21. Whereas many businesses finding themselves in this position would use this opportunity to apologize and make declarations of improvement, the owners of Rolled and Roasted chose instead to dig their heels in, and so the ice cream stand that had previously felt so comfortable defining any and all criticism as “slander” went all in on the defamation of both the whistleblowing employee and Tranzmission.
There’s a lot to unpack here, so in the interest of digestibility the statement will be discussed piece by piece.
Right off the bat, Rolled and Roasted enthusiastically mounts yet one more attempt to pull Tranzmission, a nonbinary- and trans-led nonprofit that has for nearly two decades provided vital direct services to members of our local community and beyond, into a mess of the owner’s creation. The organization is here accused of harassment, and it is implied that this supposed harassment was brought on by Rolled and Roasted’s lack of interest in a sensitivity training provided by Tranzmission. It is further suggested that the business instead opted to provide itself with its own training, though the wording is, as always, difficult to follow. Finally, the statement claims that Tranzmission staff was present on April 20 for their free ice cream promotion. In fact, none were in attendance, but it is perhaps fair at this point to assume that the owners consider all gender non-conforming people in Asheville to be affiliated with Tranzmission in some capacity.
Commenting on an inquiry as to the veracity of this assertion, the Rolled and Roasted team confirmed that yes, in their telling of events Tranzmission had attempted to extort them into taking a training under threat of online harassment. This claim is made in contrast to a screen capture taken from their work chat, in which Tranzmission staff visiting the Merrimon location in January were described as “very friendly,” and that these representatives from the organization characterized the existing men/women bathroom signs (which replaced the XX/XY chromosome signs) as “fine as they are,” though gender neutral signs were recommended should the business choose to take things “to the next level.”
Rolled and Roasted’s claim that Tranzmission attempted to extort them, and the actual staff reaction to Tranzmission’s visit in January
Further, this screen capture from the Rolled and Roasted work chat seems to suggest that their self-conducted sensitivity training did not stick.
Rolled and Roasted owners and emploees making light of nonbinary and trans identities
When a volunteer who works with Tranzmission (and has requested anonymity for fear of retribution from Rolled and Roasted) expressed skepticism in comments attached to the statement, she was contacted by a representative presenting herself as a sensitivity trainer working with Rolled and Roasted. The representative informed her that she would only entertain a private conversation under a mutual agreement of no screen captures taken by either party. Accordingly, screen captures of the ensuing conversation were not obtained, but the anonymous volunteer has provided us with a description of it.
According to her, the business’ representative initially stated that Tranzmission had demanded $3,000 for a sensitivity training, or else the nonprofit’s online harassment campaign of the business would continue on in perpetuity. Keep in mind that Tranzmission had never mentioned Rolled and Roasted in any statements or social media posts, private or public. When the volunteer pointed out that this scenario could not possibly be accurate and asked for evidence or written proof of the described interaction, the representative suggested that the party attempting to extort the business may have been an impostor, all along. Rolled and Roasted’s statement was partially amended soon after, in order to reflect this new and exciting revelation.
Rolled and Roasted’s statement, edited to indicate that the party in question was not associated with Tranzmission
There is some small amount of delight to be taken in a literal reading of the resultant paragraph, which now seems to suggest the work of transfeminine con artists who threaten struggling local businesses with online retribution should they fail to pay up for an imagined sensitivity training. That these criminal masterminds then showed up for free ice cream on April 20, and that Rolled and Roasted recognized them but did not seem to mind their opportunistic return to the scene of the crime, is also worth a moment’s bemusement.
When Hanson, who had originally reached out to Lewis to discuss the possibility of a sensitivity training for the business, attempted to clarify the interaction in question, the thread she had responded to was then quickly deleted.
Hanson’s attempt to correct Rolled and Roasted’s narrative
Returning to Rolled and Roasted’s statement, they follow up their smearing of Tranzmission by painting the inclusion of members belonging to a marginalized community as a safety concern for cisgender customers, particularly cisgender women. Readers may remember this argument from the bygone days of HB 2, when the state general assembly also sought to paint trans women — who are statistically more likely to experience sexual assault than their cisgender counterparts — as predators to be necessarily excluded from public life. It is worth remembering that the bathrooms in question are both single use, and that they were labeled as gender neutral when Edna’s of Asheville occupied the space.
Continuing on into yet deeper depths of Rolled and Roasted’s statement, we find the whistleblowing employee again disparaged and her concerns summarily dismissed.
First, it is implied that the whistleblowing employee did not begin work until a week after her first day working in the store on March 1, and then we are told that the check she received two days late in April was actually available by the end of the day she ought to have received it. Next, the employee’s character is impugned with an accusation that she supposedly admitted to carrying out her self-advocacy efforts simply because she was bored at home, with nothing aside from schoolwork to occupy her time. This assertion seems to have originated from a verbal communication between the employee and a consultant hired by the business, discussed in the attending screen capture.
An exchange between the employee and the business’ hired consultant
The statement goes on to discuss the variability of tip share week to week, though we have already seen that Lewis sees the distribution of tips as a privilege to be meted out at his own discretion. It is worth noting here that labor regulations are quite clear that employees must receive at least 85 percent of what they would have received before their tips are put into the share.
Further into the statement, Rolled and Roasted again boasts of their relatively low sanitation score, while simultaneously blaming that score on Edna’s of Asheville and the whistleblowing employee. Any who access the publicly available results of their health inspection and find themselves disturbed by that information are encouraged to reach out to the business, though they are reminded to so privately and discreetly. This is actually quite sound advice, given that all public comments questioning the integrity of Rolled and Roasted and their business practices are promptly deleted.
The business also makes very clear that this statement is NOT an apology, before reviving the unverifiable claims of violent threats received, though this time that is accompanied by the rather bizarre assertion that this apparently struggling business is able to fund self-defense classes for its entire staff, whom we are reminded are mostly vulnerable high school students. We are then told these classes are absolutely necessary because concerned Ashevillians on the Internet are contemptuously conspiring to hold the owners accountable for their own various actions and statements.
Finally, readers are expected to be impressed that a store that has been open for a whole three months currently holds a four percent turnover rate, before being reminded of Lewis’ relative youth as though that fact somehow absolves him of his legal responsibilities as an employer. In addition, Rolled and Roasted gave away free ice cream that one time, so please ignore any criticism of their operation and business practices. And of course, all responses not deemed sufficiently sycophantic will be removed in order to preserve the mental health of the person who presumably typed up this whole mess.
So then, what to make of all this? On the face of it, the barrage of easily disproved and often contradictory claims seems to be the result of a panicked desperation, incited by the grim possibility of accountability on the part of the owners to the public. Yet this is all so highly reminiscent of our current political moment, is it not? After all, the rapid deployment of vast amounts of misinformation in order to distort reality, with the intent of protecting oneself from reality, is arguably the defining political strategy of Trumpism. As I compiled and organized the myriad images and screen captures prerequisite to telling this tale, I couldn’t help but wonder if it is the ultimate aspiration of Rolled and Roasted to function as the Trump Administration of ice cream stands in Asheville.
Rolled and Roasted is proud to call itself the youngest owned business in Asheville. And indeed, many learning opportunities have presented themselves to Lewis and company this year, though perhaps the most vital lesson of all has yet to be learned. This crucial and important moral is that running a restaurant — or any business — is a privilege, and the privilege of owning and operating Rolled and Roasted is graciously granted by those Ashevillians whom the business claims to serve, upon whose kind and generous patronization the restaurant’s continued operation depends.
Of course, Rolled and Roasted is far from the only employer in Asheville to display a fondness for transphobia and a contempt for its workers, though in this case those transgressions are perhaps more blatant and shameless than those to which Ashevillians are accustomed. It is fair to wonder if sufficient time remains between now and the coming winter for the owners to finally learn, and implement, that lesson.
For the sake of their employees past, present and perhaps even future, I sincerely hope that they do.
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Brynn Estelle is an Asheville-based transgender organizer, advocate and educator.
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