Fringe religious group runs businesses in Ithaca
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By Max Denning
He stands behind the counter and calls out another order, the customer approaches and he hands her her tea with a smile. Emet Couch seems like your average small-town café barista. The 34-year-old has tattoos covering his arms, straggly hair back in a ponytail and a scruffy unmanaged beard. But The Mate Factor isn’t the average cafe and Couch isn’t the average barista. Couch is a part of the Ithaca branch of the religious organization The Twelve Tribes, and the Maté Factor is one of the organization’s numerous businesses.
“We see war, strife and division in many places around the world and even in the society right around us,” Couch said. “In contrast to that, we simply want to learn how to love one another and have dignity and show complete respect for one another.”
The Twelve Tribes are an international religious organization that promotes what they call “a simple way of life.” Couch and the organization’s website say the main tenet of their religion is the Bible’s Acts 2:44, which states, “All who believed were together and shared all things in common.”
The organization has faced criticism from the Ithaca community in the past and faces consistent national controversy about their beliefs.
An estimated 30 people are a part of the Ithaca Twelve Tribes community. They live in a three-story home with nearly 12,000 square feet on West Third Street. The property also includes a warehouse with 7,000 square feet.
The Twelve Tribes community home in Ithaca, New York. Photo by Max Denning
The group includes five different families, with over a dozen children ranging from 2-year-olds to teenagers.
The community in Ithaca owns and operates two businesses: Commonwealth Construction and the Mate Factor Cafe. Both companies, just like the community itself, are independent branches of national Twelve Tribes organizations.
In the community, members share everything; clothes, money, bedrooms, music, even a common look. Men grow beards and let their hair grow into ponytails. Women dress “modestly” usually covered from ankle to neckline and let their hair grow.
Couch, who moved from a community in Hanburg, New York to the one in Ithaca, said all skills that are learned by a member are shared among all members.
“If one person has a skill he teaches it to everyone else,” Couch said.
Another member of the community who works in the cafe, Yedidya, said people often move around.
The backyard of The Twelve Tribes home in Ithaca, New York. Photo by Max Denning
“We have people with different skills who come in and it’s just really amazing what we can learn,” he said.
Members of the tribe in Ithaca either work for the construction company or the cafe.
All the revenue made from the cafe and the construction company goes into a common purse, Couch and Yedidya both said.
“It’s really amazing, we have one common purse and everyone here is treated completely equally,” Couch said.”
Another verse which the organization cites is Acts 24:14, “But I admit that I follow the Way, which they call a cult. I worship the God of our ancestors, and I firmly believe the Jewish law and everything written in the prophets.”
Couch said he often hears his ‘community’ called a cult, to which he responds in jest.
“When it really comes down to it the word cult is usually short for culture,” Couch said. “We make no apologies for how we live and we are very satisfied.”
In 2006, a group of residents formed the Ithacans Opposed to the Twelve Tribes Cult. The group organized a boycott of the business and even publicly protested one of the Tribes’ public recruitment efforts.
John Sullivan, their founder, wrote an article in the Ithaca Community News in January 2007, which outlines the group’s many issues with the Twelve Tribes, including their “promotion of racist, misogynistic and homophobic doctrines.”
Sullivan also said the group is opposed to the Twelve Tribes use of child labor.
Children have been seen working in the cafe and working for their construction company.
In 2001, the New York State labor department fined two companies affiliated with the Twelve Tribes a combined $2,000 for violating child labor law. 
Neither the Mate Factor Cafe nor Commonwealth Construction company have ever been fined for violating child labor law.
In an anonymous survey about religious practices of businesses in Ithaca, spread to Ithaca College students and members of the Ithaca community, multiple respondents brought up the Mate Factor Cafe as a place they avoid.
“That Maté place downtown owned by the cult, yeah I stay away from there,” one respondent said.
Another respondent said his sexuality causes him not to go into the cafe.
“As a gay man I avoid Maté Factor precisely so as not to have negative experiences there,” the other respondent said.
Couch said he wouldn’t comment on the criticism the group has faced.
“Our message to anyone who has any skepticism is they should come meet us in person,” he said.
