Washington state is known as the birthplace of the bikini barista— female coffee servers who wear tiny bathing suits, pasties or sometimes no tops at all.
But now, after a series of mounting complaints, Everett, Wash. is considering a city ordinance that would require the nearly-naked servers to wear more conservative clothing.
According to Washington’s Q13 Fox News, there are fewer than half a dozen barista stands in the town of just over 100,000. However, the city says that they’re “draining a lot of resources investigating complaints” and may be hotbeds for some illegal activity.
“We know criminal activity isn’t happening at every barista stand, but our experience has been this type of business model does tend to allow for that criminal activity,” City of Everett spokeswoman Meghan Pembroke told Q13.
In Washington state, it’s legal for women to be topless in public, which has sparked a mini movement behind these so called bikini-barista shops. In Arizona, where the laws are stricter but the weather is warmer, they have Bikini Beans, a company started by Ben Lyles and his wife, which now has two locations.
“We stand for so much more than a girl in a bikini,” Lyles told Fox News via email in March. “It’s empowering for our baristas to wear a bikini, feel comfortable in their own skin, embrace that, and have a choice to do something they enjoy and love.”
He continued, “Our internal mission statement allows us the ability to block out the haters and remain true to who we are and what we stand for.”
And taking away a servers’ right to dress however she pleases will likely mean a lot less money coming in, a woman working at Hillbilly Hotties stand said.
“It would be less profitable,” the server, who introduced herself as Kat, told Q13. If the ordinance passes, the coffee server says she’ll likely move to another city to find work.
This article was originally published in Fox News.
