Two co-ops, same block

May Day Cafe transitions to worker-owned co-op, City Blocks Quilt Shop marks five years of community ownership

  • Two co-ops, same block_Danielle Fraher.mp3

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Ever since it first opened in the mid-1990s, May Day Cafe at 3440 Bloomington Ave. has been a thriving hub for its local community. Now, after a year of fundraising to buy the business, employees are keeping the cafe going by turning it into a worker-owned cooperative.
The May Day Cafe Workers Cooperative’s year-long fundraising campaign just closed this December, and as of Jan. 27, the co-op now owns the May Day Cafe, according to a post on the cafe’s Facebook page. . The cafe is currently closed until approximately Feb. 7 as it makes the transition, and the co-op will post further updates on its Facebook and Instagram.
The co-op has been working with previous owner Andy Lunning in making the transition go as smoothly as possible, according to Mira Klein, one of the four founding worker-owners who has made the co-op a reality along with other non-member workers and people in the community. 
“[May Day Cafe] is such an important community gathering spot for Powderhorn and greater parts of South Minneapolis,” Klein said. “I think a workers cooperative model actually offers a really sustainable future for that, so that’s really exciting.”
In addition to the $130,000 Great Streets loan the Minneapolis City Council granted May Day Cafe, the campaign raised $104,000 out of the original $125,000 goal over the last year, something Klein said blows her away.
“If I thought I knew before how much people love this cafe, I really know it now,” Klein said.
When Lunning told his staff in the fall of 2023 he planned to retire and sell the cafe, Klein and her co-workers spent the following few months considering what it would mean to buy the business as a workers co-op, meeting with other co-ops in the city to learn about their experiences. By January 2024, they made the decision to move ahead with the process with help from Nexus Community Partners, a developer for cooperatives and community-based organizations.
“It’s really hard,” Klein said. “Being a business is really hard as one person, and it’s really hard as a group, but we get to share the load.”
 
ALONG BLOOMINGTON AVE.
Just down the street from May Day Cafe, City Blocks Quilt Shop at 3400 Bloomington Ave. has been a consumer-owned co-op for almost five years, relying on support from volunteers and co-op members in their tight-knit sewing community, in Minneapolis and beyond. The co-op now has almost 500 members from all over the country, who get discounts and a vote at the annual board meeting, according to board member and volunteer shopkeeper Val Heath.
The shop’s volunteers, members and visitors love to buy from and support May Day Cafe, according to co-op board president Lily Lamb, who said she was very excited about the cafe becoming a worker-owned co-op.
“The more cooks you have in your kitchen, the longer your conversations are, the more complicated things can be,” Lamb said, “but the more diverse voices you have in what you’re doing and the more diverse lived experiences and opinions and perspectives, the stronger and richer your business is going to be at the end of the day.”
As for how two co-op businesses happen to be so close together, it comes down to not only the money needed to own and run a business but the community it’s based in, Lamb said.
“People wanted to keep it in the neighborhood and keep what’s special and unique about it,” Lamb said. “And one of the ways to do that if one person doesn’t have enough resources to just purchase a business outright [...] is to collectively organize together, share the risk and share the ability to raise capital among a group of people.”
May Day Cafe in particular has a deeper co-op history, a legacy that the co-op feels very aware of during their transition, Klein said. Before the cafe, the building was home to a non-profit, volunteer-run grocery co-op called the Powderhorn Food Community Co-op from the early 1970s to the mid-1990s, according to the Minnesota Historical Society.
Being exposed to the non-traditional business structure of co-ops also has a political and economic impact, Klein said.
“It’s not a way that we usually see business run, at least in this moment in this country,” she said. “I think it’s cool that someone can walk down the street and see two co-ops and say, ‘Oh, wow, this is a really viable way that things can be done. I want to learn more.’”
Danielle Fraher is a University of Minnesota student majoring in journalism.

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