Walrus and the Carpenter owners release financials as strike continues
Julius Ayo
June 24, 2026
The owners of The Walrus and the Carpenter have opened their books for the first time since their workers walked off the job, releasing a year of financial statements, wage data, and an open letter that argues the Ballard oyster bar and its sister restaurants are operating at a loss in a hospitality market they describe as among the most punishing in the country.
The disclosure, shared by Sea Creatures, the restaurant group led by chef Renee Erickson and partners Jeremy Price, Chad Dale and Ira, lands days after United Creatures of the Sea began an unfair labor practice strike on June 18 and one day after the restaurant closed for the evening on June 22, citing what management said were incidents of harassment, name-calling and spitting directed at guests on the picket line. The union has not responded publicly to those specific allegations. Erickson and her partners say they had largely stayed quiet for nearly two years and concluded that “greater transparency is necessary.”
According to the company’s self-reported, unaudited profit and loss statement, the group posted gross sales of about $17.5 million across its restaurants in 2025 and finished the year with a net loss of $787,120, or 4.57 percent of revenue. In the open letter, the owners write that the figure does not include the cash required to service roughly $10 million in company debt, and that during slower months they “borrowed money simply to make payroll.” They attribute the strain to a guest-visit decline they estimate at 20 percent from 2024 and 40 percent from 2023, alongside rising labor, ingredient, and occupancy costs, and they tie the closures of The Whale Wins, Bateau, Boat Bar, and two General Porpoise locations to the same pressures.
Regarding compensation, the company reports wage figures that are well above regional averages. Its materials list a mean all-in rate of $49.07 an hour for servers, $38.87 for cooks, and $32.60 for dishwashers at The Walrus and the Carpenter, compared with Seattle-area means it attributes to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Individual 2025 examples include two bartenders who earned roughly $92,165 and $79,810 for the year. The company says it pays half of the employee premium on its base medical plan, offers a 401(k) match of up to 4 percent, and provides paid time off and a monthly wellness stipend. Those all-in wage rates include distributions from the 22 percent service charge the restaurant adopted on January 1, 2025, which is the same mechanism at the center of the labor dispute.
A closer read of the statements raises questions that the company does not address in its materials. The single largest expense category on the year is listed only as “uncategorized,” totaling $1,156,202, a figure larger than the reported annual loss itself, with the biggest share recorded in one accounting period in the spring as the group was closing restaurants. The filing also records $954,623 in management fees and $129,341 in bonuses. The company states that owner compensation in 2025 was $130,000 each for Erickson and Price and $84,500 for Dale, and that these payments “comprise the entirety of owner compensation,” though the materials do not identify who receives the management fees. The wage and loss figures also span different scopes. The earnings data describes The Walrus and the Carpenter specifically, while the loss is consolidated across more than five legal entities, including restaurants that have since closed, and the company does not break out whether the flagship is profitable on its own.
The union’s case has been public for weeks. United Creatures of the Sea, which represents cooks, oyster shuckers, servers, dishwashers, bartenders, bakers, and baristas at the restaurant, voted 18 to 2 to authorize the strike and says it has filed unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board. The union has said workers faced reduced hours, lost income, worsened benefits, and the shifting of bargaining-unit work to management during more than a year of negotiations toward a first contract, and that it struck to pressure the company to bargain in good faith. The owners, for their part, say they believed a tentative agreement had been reached on March 4 before the union stepped back from it, and that the strike followed a one-hour deadline to accept the union’s latest proposal.
In his written responses, Jeremy describes the central dispute as economic rather than personal. “Our goal has never been to win an argument,” he wrote, adding that the company wants “a solution that works for employees and for the business.” He characterized the company’s own legal filings during bargaining as a response to conduct that “interfered with productive negotiations,” and said management has consulted experienced labor counsel throughout.
The Walrus and the Carpenter, which opened in Ballard in 2010 and has earned multiple James Beard nominations, remained open during the early days of the strike with replacement staff before closing on June 22. Sea Creatures says it is ready to continue bargaining. The union has launched a fund to support striking workers and has continued to picket. Seattle Today has reached out to United Creatures of the Sea for comment on the financial disclosure and will update this story.
