SAVANNAH, Ga. (WSAV) — Workers from popular Savannah cafés, Foxy Loxy, Fox & Fig and Henny Penny are officially on strike.

This past Saturday, café workers walked out of the job demanding management to acknowledge and respect their wants and needs.

Previously on News 3, we spoke to Sam Hughes, a prep cook and striker from Foxy Loxy. She told us this has been in the works for months.

“We demand dignity, equal treatment and equal pay regardless of race, gender, immigrant status, age, sexual orientation or mental health disability,” Hughes previously stated. “Respect from management, an end to arbitrary suspensions, and we are demanding fair grievance processes.”

Management told News 3 there are less than 30 people participating in this.

Julie Kaufman, Director of Operations for the cafés said, “We had an intermittent, an attempted intermittent strike over the weekend. It’s not an actual strike. We haven’t had unionized employees yet.”

The official walkout happened Saturday at Henny Penny, and Kaufman says the revolt was disruptive and chaotic.

“It was very sad,” Kaufman said. “We had kids that were crying and we had kids that were very shaken up. We had parents remove their children because they didn’t feel safe with what was occurring.”

Kaufman told News 3, hours have been adjusted temporarily for all café locations due to taking a slight hit in workers.

“We had a lot of folks volunteer to pick up shifts. We’ve had other folks volunteer to go to different cafés and help out as they can,” Kaufman said. “Some people as they’ve gone home in the last couple of days have roommates that would like to come and apply for work at the cafés.”

Kaufman says they believe in face-to-face communication – and she says they have tried their best to communicate with workers.

“I know that it looks like there has not been a lot of communication at all,” Kaufman explained. “But rest assured we’ve been doing that on the back end of things and have been communicating with the teams that have had questions, comments and concerns.”

As of now, the plan for the cafés is to move forward. Kaufman told News 3 they are going to show the public better than telling.

“Everything that we’ve done in 13 years has always included our employees and our managers. People have a seat at our table. That’s what we believe in and that’s what we continue to do.”

We reached out to Sam Hughes for an update on the strike, however, workers cannot provide comments at this time.