About 45 workers at Ghirardelli Square's flagship shop walked out in a three-day unfair-labor-practice strike, accusing Swiss parent Lindt & Sprüngli of hiding revenue from a 6% customer "healthcare fee" while pushing to scale back their union health coverage.

About 45 workers at the Original Ghirardelli Chocolate & Ice Cream Shop walked off the job Thursday, shuttering the flagship storefront at Ghirardelli Square for the first strike at the location in more than 40 years. The three-day, union-sanctioned walkout — the last one was in 1984 — was set to end Saturday night, according to Unite Here Local 2, which represents the workers.

The dispute is not about wages first. It is about health care, and about a fee most tourists never notice. Local 2 is striking over what it calls bad-faith bargaining: the union says Ghirardelli has, since talks opened in May 2025, refused to disclose how much revenue it collects from a 6% "healthcare fee" tacked onto customers' bills at its Ghirardelli Square locations — even as management pushes to move workers onto a plan the union says carries unaffordable co-payments for emergency-room visits and critical care. "They need to be transparent about what kind of resources they're getting from customers that are supposed to be dedicated to paying for health care coverage," Local 2 campaign researcher Sonya Karabel told KQED.

Here is the cap-table reality the picket line makes concrete. Ghirardelli is not an independent Gold Rush confectioner; it is a unit of Swiss-listed Lindt & Sprüngli, which reported roughly 6 billion Swiss francs in sales last year — more than $7.3 billion — and about 970 million francs, near $1.2 billion, in operating profit. The workers seeking to protect their coverage number about 45, at what the union says is the only unionized Ghirardelli location in the city.

The human stakes are specific. Fredrick Jones, a greeter at the shop for 17 years, told KQED he fears losing the coverage that pays for the medication keeping his body from rejecting a heart transplant he underwent last October. Alicia Tamayo, a stocker of nearly 22 years, said her two daughters depend on the benefits. Cynthia Cardoza, a 30-year stocker supervisor, said the fight has run "almost more than a year, and the company doesn't listen to us."

The company's public posture is measured and non-specific. A spokesperson for the Lindt & Sprüngli Group told KQED it "values and respects" its employees and is "committed to bargaining in good faith," with the focus on "reaching an agreement that supports our employees and ensures the long-term success of our business." Ghirardelli did not respond to a separate request for comment from The San Francisco Standard. Notably, neither statement addressed the union's central accusation — the withheld figures on the customer healthcare fee.

The timing is the leverage. A shuttered chocolate landmark on Fisherman's Wharf in peak tourist season is a visible pressure point, and health benefits have been the through-line of Bay Area labor actions this year, from UC service workers to the C&H Sugar refinery in Crockett to Kaiser Permanente. What's still unsettled: whether Ghirardelli reopens the flagship after Saturday, whether it discloses the fee revenue the union is demanding, and whether a contract that has dragged for over a year moves at all once the picket line comes down. The number that would settle the core question — how much that 6% fee actually brings in — is the one the company has not put on the table.