Breaking Bread Cafe shuttered its doors this past August, accelerating a decline in food options in North Minneapolis. Its closure came months after Aldi departed from Penn and Lowry avenues, creating a challenging situation for Northside residents seeking quality food retailers.
The restaurant opened back in 2015 at 1210 West Broadway Ave. N. under Appetite For Change (AFC), a nonprofit whose mission was to create a restaurant in North Minneapolis that offered traditional African American dishes with healthy alternatives.
While its closure has reverberated in the community, the team at AFC is optimistic in their plans to find a “forever home” for the restaurant.
Tasha Powell co-founded AFC alongside Michelle Horovitz and Princess Haley in 2011. As a longtime Northside resident, Powell refused to allow the circumstances in North Minneapolis to dictate how the community sees itself.
“I don’t really try to look at my community as a food desert,” she said. “I believe that we have an abundance of unhealthy food options, which is an issue.”
After the restaurant’s closing, AFC announced that they would end their collaboration with Station 81 out of Union Depot in St. Paul and the closure of their catering business. However, they assured the continuance of their youth training and opportunities program and their urban agriculture program.
Launching pad for food businesses and a community gathering space
For years, Breaking Bread Cafe provided food entrepreneurs with a location to pursue their ventures. AFC acquired Kindred Kitchen, an organization that provided new food business owners access to an affordable commercial kitchen space in 2014 as a social enterprise. Individuals could host pop-up shops at the restaurant, while food truck owners would utilize their kitchen space to prep food.
Geoffrey Wilson began working at Breaking Bread in 2017 when he became the restaurant’s manager and most recently held the role of director of catering. “Breaking Bread was a place where we could [bring in] people who didn’t have the work experience or polish you might need to work in some of the other restaurants in the Twin Cities,” he said.
DeVon Nolan, a self-proclaimed “cheerleader” of Breaking Bread, expressed her disappointment in seeing the space close after having spent years collaborating with AFC in programming the space for youth. Nolan, a food justice activist and manager of the Peoples’ Market of MPLS, witnessed the location’s impact on the youth she worked with.
“We’ve also had lots of magic on that patio,” she said. “I could see what it meant for the young people to have a place to come and rest after they spent hours pulling produce for the urban agriculture program that then ends up at the farmer’s market.”
Food landscape in North Minneapolis
Wilson shared his perspective on how Breaking Bread’s closing impacts the community. “There’s sort of a psychological loss whenever anything on the Northside closes,” he said. “It can feel like a step back in the slow progress that we’re making towards equitable resources and community experiences.”
Ann Fix is the vice president of business development at the Northside Economic Op Network (NEON), a North Minneapolis-based organization whose goal is to help small business owners and entrepreneurs find paths to creating wealth. According to Fix, 40% of their clients are food industry-related.
Kindred Kitchen at Breaking Bread provides affordable, accessible kitchen space, and NEON offers technical assistance and business planning. While disappointed by the loss of the space, Fix underlined that AFC was still in operation and reaffirmed that NEON would support them through this transition.
The building in which Breaking Bread Cafe operated along with AFC’s administrative offices and other organizations was purchased by Kenya McKnight-Ahad roughly two years ago.
Ahad purchased the building for $1.2 million to expand the ZaRah Wellness Center, where she continues supporting Black women business owners in the space. She shared that she had given a 14-month extension on the lease with AFC and a 60-day notice before their exit date.
Ahad currently rents the space out to several tenants and plans to make renovations in the fall, where she plans to create a space for a new restaurant—one she hopes to have extended hours on evenings and weekends to accommodate the surrounding neighborhoods.
“Just because our relationship didn’t work out doesn’t mean they’re not an important resource for the community,” she stated.
Plans for Breaking Bread and the Northside
Although there have been some changes in the business model for the organization, Powell reasserted that the goal is to have a home for the nonprofit. “I just want to be clear that Appetite for Change, the parent organization of Breaking Bread, has been looking for a forever home somewhere in North Minneapolis, and we want to be able to have a space where we can include all of our programming which includes Breaking Bread as a cafe,” she said.
For a forward-looking approach, Nolan referred to the Minneapolis Food Vision, a 10-year plan designed to create durable and local food systems through policy strategies and innovative initiatives.
To help address the lack of affordable commercial kitchen space in North Minneapolis, NEON is set to break ground this spring in constructing a center to benefit food business owners and entrepreneurs on the Northside.
The center will include a 22,000-square-foot community kitchen, retail space, food storage, and spaces for private kitchens. According to Fix, the center will have resources for everyone, including a new entrepreneur and a business owner looking to sell consumer packaged goods at an ample retail space.
Support Black local news
Help amplify Black voices by donating to the MSR. Your contribution enables critical coverage of issues affecting the community and empowers authentic storytelling.