9 Minnesota coffee shops that pour profits back into the community

Most coffee shops offer more than a caffeine fix; they're a welcoming space for everyone from remote workers to book clubs. But some go an extra mile, promising that money you spend on java and baked goods will help rescue cats, support veterans, promote Catholicism or provide struggling young people with mentoring and a paycheck.

At Wildflyer in Minneapolis, "we definitely have people say, 'I came into this space because I wanted a coffee, but I come back to this space because my money is going further here,' " said program manager MacKenzie Diessner.

"It's really good to be one of those businesses where people go, 'We're really happy you're here,' " said Dan Swenson-Klatt, owner of Butter Bakery Cafe in Minneapolis. "They know that what they're doing as a customer will benefit many things. And they can see those benefits playing out right in front of them."

You get a lot with your latte — or your espresso or chai or whatever you order — at Fawkes Alley Coffee.

The Minneapolis coffee shop, tucked in the alley behind storefronts lining Loring Park, has a mission beyond its menu. It's a fundraising project for support the local Futsal Society.

The what society?

Futsal is a more compact version of soccer, sort of like pickleball is to tennis. It has just five players per side and a smaller court — in fact, it can be played indoors in a basketball court, a scale that puts it within reach of youth for whom playing on a soccer league is prohibitively expensive. Kids participating in the Futsal Society league play for free. "I pitch it as accessible soccer," said Caleb Crossley, who co-founded the society with Bishar Mohamed in 2017.

Mohamed, now 21, was a seventh-grader at Anwatin Middle School, where Crossley was on the staff, when they bonded over soccer. They gathered 30 kids to play futsal the first year, and interest grew from there. Last year 285 high-school kids, most of them first-generation immigrants, played in Futsal Society games.

That's great, you might be thinking, but what does that have to do with coffee?

Enter Alex Heller, property manager of Loring Corners, a commercial office building owned by his stepfather. The building had a space that Heller had always thought would make a cool coffee shop. And the neighborhood could use one in the post-COVID world, Heller said, as the area had become "an urban desert," devoid of daytime lunch spots.

Heller also is a friend of Crossley's and a volunteer futsal coach. These factors all merged into the idea of operating a coffee shop to raise money for the Futsal Society.

"We thought, 'How cool and amazing would that be?' " Heller said.

The shop was built with the help of many donations and volunteers. "I got every single tenant on the property to commit their time and energy and skill," Heller said.

The nonprofit also mentors futsal players who've aged out of the league. Three currently work there while attending Minneapolis Community and Technical College.

"The idea is we want each of those three to work at the coffee shop for one year and participate in this program for one year," Crossley said. "They can use the skills they've gained on the way to launch them into their next interests. Then we'll hire on and recruit the next three."

It's not hard to figure out Cafe Meow's mission. You may hear it meowing or — if you're really nice — purring. The shop's two locations in Roseville and New Hope house about 30 foster cats apiece. The felines are available for adoption, but you also can simply pet them while you're sipping your beverage in their comfy home.

"It's a little paradise — they have a lot of little nooks and crannies," said owner Jessica Burge. "They just love the attention and all of the stimulation they get."

The cafe works with several local pet rescue organizations. Since opening in 2018 (in a now-closed Minneapolis location), it has found permanent homes for almost 950 cats.

Rick's Coffee Bar is operated by Every Third Saturday, a nonprofit that helps veterans find new purpose after service, particularly those suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

The organization was started by Marine Corps veteran Tom Mckenna, whose efforts to help homeless and struggling veterans led to a small shop. Then, thanks to a donor who read about it in a Star Tribune story, ETS opened a 10,000-square-foot building near Minneapolis' Veterans Administration Medical Center, where vets can get support and connect with others.

At Rick's, the street-level shop, veterans can sip free coffee or serve internships as baristas. Mckenna can help steer them toward employers eager to hire them.

The shop is named for Mckenna's family friend Rick Gustafson, an Air Force master sergeant who served nine deployments to the Middle East in special operations. He developed severe PTSD and died by suicide, Mckenna said.

Rick's celebrates Gustafson's career while also introducing the subject of suicide, "which no one wants to talk about," Mckenna said. "It's epidemic in the veteran community. The shop gives us an opportunity to tell his story and to talk about suicide and create an option for different ending."

Spyhouse, more than 20 years old and with seven locations, juggles a few different giving-back programs, said Jess Iverson, senior marketing manager.

The farm-direct sources include some female producers, who represent 70% of the labor in the coffee industry but only 20-30% of ownership, she said. Spyhouse pays women producers an extra premium and also donates 10% of the proceeds from that program to women's organizations.

Its snack selection includes Love You Cookies from the Defiant Optimist Program, a Minnesota nonprofit that supports mental health therapy for low-income immigrants and people of color. And profits from Spyhouse's special AC Cooler drink, a tea and berry-syrup concoction, go to Juxtaposition Arts, a north Minneapolis studio space for young artists.

"With coffee being such a commodity that's part of so many people's daily routines and rituals, we feel that through ethical sourcing practices — farm-direct and local partnerships — we can do our part to enrich local and global communities," Iverson said.

Rochester's St. James Coffee might be one of the few coffee shops in the country — if not the only one — whose location includes a chapel and offers a priest-led mass at 6 p.m. on the first Thursday of every month. That's not to mention crucifixes and pictures of saints on the walls, rosaries for sale and specialty drinks named after saints.

The shop is run by Catholics whose goal is "to evangelize, trying to get people back into church — those that have left, and those who have questions about it," said Cheri Block, vice president of its board of directors.

But you don't have to be Catholic to go there, she added. "Many of our customers are agnostic or other faiths. ... There's absolutely no pressure at all to even talk about faith if you don't want to."

Most of the rotating staff at Wildflyer Coffee, currently nine between its Minneapolis and St. Paul locations, are young people who have experienced homelessness or housing instability.

They're hired in groups four times a year and go through a four-month structured training program that includes barista and customer-service skills to enhance their employability and personal development. Every participant is connected with a one-on-one employment counselor, said MacKenzie Diessner, program manager.

They get paid for 20 hours a week, 15 to 18 of which are on the shop floor and the rest in the training programs. By the end of this year, almost 60 youth will have gone through the program, Diessner said.

"Of the youth we're able to get in contact with, between 2022 and '23, over 78% are either employed or in some sort of education," said Diessner, who met Wildflyer's Executive Director Carley Kammerer 10 years ago, when both worked overnight shifts at a St. Paul youth shelter.

The origin story for Lutunji's Palate begins in 2018, when Lutunji Abram met with Jeff Cowmeadow, a pastor at Calvary Church in Minneapolis, about renting space in the church to start a school for teenage parents — and brought a peach cobbler.

"Why I brought a peach cobbler, I don't know," Abram said, laughing.

Cowmeadow urged her to sell the dessert at the neighborhood farmers market, where her cobblers sold out every week. When she heard about a location with a commercial kitchen in a new Minneapolis apartment development, she said, "OK, I can try retail, why not!"

When she opened in 2022 she was determined to give back the kind of support she received as a kid in north Minneapolis. "I was blessed to grow up in a community where they provided strong wraparound support services."

She partners with two Minneapolis workforce development programs, Step Up Youth Employment Program and Emerge, offering jobs to participants 18 to 24.

"If they have joy and have a passion to bake, we come together," Abram said.

Shaunie Grigsby spent seven years in the nonprofit sector, where she connected with youth-development organizations. Meanwhile, she had always dreamed of opening a coffee shop. The two interests came together in St. Paul's Flava Coffee and Cafe.

Grigsby, Flava's founder and CEO, partners with two youth-employment programs, Minneapolis' Hired and St. Paul's Right Track, that work with youth who have limited work experiences and possibly mental health or other challenges. Grigsby hires participants and often keeps them on after their programs end, mentoring and coaching to provide a leg up for future success.

And when the young people are ready to move on to other opportunities, "we send them off with gifts and food and love and all the things that young people need in order to go off in the world and start their journey," Grigsby said.

Dan Swenson-Klatt, owner of Butter Bakery Cafe, wants to re-create the feel of a small-town Main Street coffee shop/meeting place — except in Minneapolis.

"What we've created is a space for people to see their connections with others," he said.

A major focus is partnering with Beacon Interfaith Housing Collaborative, which runs the apartments in his building and provided him with space for the cafe. In return, Butter offers jobs and mentoring to young adults who live in the transitional apartments.

"Our goal has been to create a space where [the young residents] would see what community can be and participate in it," Swenson-Klatt said,

In fact, he wants the whole community to feel that way about the cafe, which serves variously as political headquarters, a neighborhood organizing space, a tutoring and networking space.

"Makes me feel like we're sharing of a way of being a coffee shop as something we need more of and can be done by lots of people in lots of places," Swenson-Klatt said.