Lending & Loans Archives - MCCD | Minnesota Consortium of Community Developers

Client Highlight: Safeway Home Healthcare

When Amare Solomon first purchased the office building for his company, Safeway Home Healthcare, the space was eerily quiet; his car was the only one ever parked in the lot. But a few years later, after several service expansions and rounds of hiring, the office is now buzzing with administrative staff, program directors, and leadership teams shuffling in and out of the front door throughout the workday.

To Amare, this feels surreal. “The parking lot is always full now. I see that, and I almost have to pinch myself and ask, ‘Is this even real?’”

Founded in 2019 as a personal care assistance provider, Safeway Home Healthcare was inspired by Amare’s mother, who worked for years as a Personal Care Assistant (PCA). And as business boomed, Amare decided to expand Safeway’s team and services.

By 2023, Amare had hired a Chief Operating Officer, Bereket Getachew. He also contacted MCCD Business Advisor Luis Mendoza for funding to hire the additional directors, administrative staff, and finance specialists needed to support Safeway’s growth.

Working closely with Luis, Amare applied for and received $41,000 in working capital from MCCD and the City of Roseville in May 2024. He used these funds to build two new Safeway departments—the Adult Rehabilitative Mental Health Services (ARMHS) and Housing Stabilization Services (HSS) programs. Not only do these programs provide at-home mental health care outside of hospitalization, but they also create support networks for patients to find stable housing. Amare also hired several new staff members and program directors to support these departments and the company’s continuing growth

Reflecting on the loan application and approval process, Amare said “It took a long time. But [MCCD] was asking us important questions. We hired more finance staff and a Chief Financial Officer because they pointed out that our finance department needed more support.”

However, this was not the end of Safeway’s growth. In February 2025, Amare was approved for a second loan of $109,500 from MCCD and DEED. He utilized part of these funds as working capital to withstand delays in payer reimbursements, continue building ARMHS and HSS, and strengthen Safeway’s infrastructure during an expansion to include insurance-based payers. The funds also supported the development of a private pay home care program: Safeway Signature Care. This program was a strategic addition that has diversified Safeway’s revenue, broadened its client base, and allowed for more creativity with the services that the company provides.

Safeway’s vision, displayed on a framed poster in the office entry, is “A future where quality home care services make independent living accessible and sustainable for all.” And driven by this vision is a bold and exciting business goal: to expand into twenty states by 2033.

“This seems overwhelming if you think about it over the span of ten years,” says Mark Schlitter, Safeway’s Chief Financial Officer. “But to use an analogy, these goals are like eating an elephant. The only way to tackle it is one bite at a time.”

Safeway is seeking to collaborate with aligned providers who may benefit from leveraging its operational platform, infrastructure, and values-driven approach. Interested organizations are encouraged to contact Amare Solomon at asolomon@safewayhhc.com or 651-300-5366.

Are you a small business owner or entrepreneur seeking resources for your business? Visit mccdmn.org to learn how MCCD can support you.

It Takes a Village: Financing the May Day Cafe Worker Cooperative Conversion

It Takes a Village: Financing the May Day Café Workers Cooperative Conversion

For Mira Klein, it was a dream come true.

Having worked at many neighborhood coffee shops, Klein had seen how valuable these spaces are as a place for people to gather and connect – and she longed to bridge this value she saw among customers with her experience as a worker and her desire for more emphasis on relationships and agency in the workplace.

A year after she started as a barista at May Day Cafe in 2022, the cafe’s long-time owner announced he was selling the South Minneapolis mainstay. That opened the door for Klein and other employees to transition May Day Cafe from a sole proprietor to a worker-owned cooperative.

“It’s a dream to be part of a world-building project like this,” Klein said. “I have a real sense of purpose, knowing I’m contributing to something that reflects the world I want to be a part of.”

Navigating a system that wasn't design for shared ownership

But world-building often requires structures and solutions that don’t fit with the status quo. That’s the case for many shared ownership models, like worker cooperatives. The May Day worker-owners were supported by an outpouring of community generosity, raising $105,000 through local donations. But that wasn’t enough to finance the purchase of the building and resources necessary to continue the business—and getting those dollars was beyond the expertise of the workers who came together to form the coop.

“The timeline of finance is so different than the speed of building a cooperative which is this deep, intimate endeavor where a group of people are taking on a huge risk together all while stepping into totally new roles and decision-making processes and forms of knowledge,” Klein recalled. “We were trying to slow down to figure out how to run a business together and that was in tension with the speed we had to move to get the financing lined up.”

“I remember someone saying, ‘the numbers are so big that they feel unreal,’” she said. “We were talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars and it was hard to even wrap our brains around. The majority of people in this project come from working-class or middle-class backgrounds and nobody owns property so there was a sort of disbelief in it all.”

For MCCD, bridging the gap between aspiration and access is at the heart of what we do. From affordable housing to small business development, we advance policies and provide resources to promote inclusive economic growth and foster generative, long-term community benefit. One way we do that is through lending and technical assistance for shared ownership endeavors—like May Day Cafe.

“Too many Minnesotans have never had equitable access to asset-building opportunities and capital to finance their dreams. With rising inequality, a massive wave of business ownership transitions on the horizon, and long-standing racial and economic disparities, we need bold, systemic solutions that root wealth and power in communities. Shared ownership models offer a proven, culturally grounded pathway to generative economic development—but these models often face unique barriers to financing.”

Electra Skrzydlewski

MCCD Director of Shared Ownership

A community effort to fund the conversion

To address those barriers, MCCD worked with organizational partners and legislative champions to pass a pilot Community Wealth Building Program with the explicit goal of directing state funds to support worker cooperatives and other shared ownership enterprises. The program was received with strong interest and support from lawmakers and resulted in $3 million in funding in 2024. In partnership with the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development, MCCD created the Shared Ownership Loan Fund, providing flexible, low-interest capital for startup, conversion, and growth financing for Minnesota businesses that are at least 51% owned by people who are Black, Indigenous, People of Color, immigrants, low-income, women, veterans, people with disabilities, or those serving underinvested geographic areas.

As a consortium, MCCD doesn’t just advocate for solutions that benefit the community development field and its members, but also works in deep partnership with a wide network of organizations that share resources and lend their expertise to small businesses and entrepreneurial groups. For the May Day Cafe Workers Cooperative project, multiple organizations collaborated to put the pieces together. On the technical assistance side, Nexus Community Partners and Platform CRE provided guidance on employee ownership conversions, real estate acquisitions, and shared ownership business models. On the financing side, MCCD and two of our long-time partners—Shared Capital Cooperative and the City of Minneapolis Community Planning and and Economic Development (CPED) Department—were able to bring more than $670,000 in capital to the project.

For Klein and the other worker-owners, there was a big learning curve around understanding—let alone making a collective decision— around the project financing. “The challenging part of this was not knowing the scope of what it would look like but being aware that this is not a traditional deal,” she said. “Everyone was reflecting back to us, ‘If it feels complicated, it’s because it is!’ I was shocked when all the lenders were on a call together the week of the closing and there were 15 people—12 of whom I’d never heard of or met!”

At MCCD, we know how powerful it can be for borrowers to realize how many people are quietly working on their behalf—that newfound sense of shared investment is a striking reminder that this work isn’t just transactional; it’s relational.

One of the key lenders was City of Minneapolis CPED. Becky Shaw, a Senior Economic Development Specialist, explained that the city’s goal is to create tools to make it more cost-effective for small businesses to launch and operate in Minneapolis — and to bridge gaps to make business development more equitable for historically marginalized enterprises.

“With our programs, there’s intentional inclusion of cooperatives to make sure we’re investing in and committed to other business models that may have been economically disadvantaged, to make sure they have the same financing tools or access to capital."

Becky Shaw

Senior Economic Development Specialist, City of Minneapolis Community Planning and and Economic Development (CPED) Department

For instance, while the federal Small Business Administration provides low-interest loans that many entrepreneurs rely on, those products don’t work for cooperatives due to the SBA’s personal guarantee requirement. Without those constraints, the City was able to provide a 2% loan of $75,000 to finance a portion of the acquisition costs, and an additional $130,000 Great Streets loan to finance a discrete project gap.

“But I don’t have the capability to do this myself,” Shaw emphasized. “I rely on Shared Capital and Nexus and MCCD to pull all the information together for me. And the city is not a direct lender; all our loan programs are participation based, so I need someone to put the loan structure together and collect payments.”

Shared Capital Cooperative has been putting together these types of loans since its inception—in direct response to the challenges Shaw articulated. “Food co-ops in the late 1960s and 70s struggled to get financing and pooled their resources for micro loans,” said Roderick McCulloch, a loan officer. “Shared Capital has lent more than $70 million in 1,000 loans in 45 years. We’re one of the very small number of Community Development Financial Institutions that work exclusively with co-ops and are a co-op ourselves.”

Because of their structure and the businesses they serve, the way they work is dramatically different from a commercial bank.

“We don’t typically rely on personal guarantees; we’re looking at the capacity of a group rather than an individual sole proprietor, including who amongst the core steering committee or founding members is going to have the skill sets to maintain and operate this business. We look at how organized they are, how well developed their business plan is, and who they’re working with for technical assistance. With May Day, they had Nexus and Platform MN and MCCD working with them and had gone through the [City of Minneapolis’] Cooperative Technical Assistance Program program. Being an existing business that had 20 years of financial history and the assets of brand reputation and community goodwill really strengthened their proposal, too.”

Roderick McCulloch

Loan Officer, Shared Capital Cooperative

Tapping into the Shared Ownership Loan Fund

But even with the City of Minneapolis and Shared Capital loans, May Day Cafe Workers Cooperative still had a significant gap. That’s where MCCD came in.

“Increasing the number and capacity of shared ownership lenders is essential to meeting this moment,” Skrzydlewski said. “It’s not just about deploying capital differently—it’s about aligning financing with a broader vision for resilient, equitable, and community-controlled economic development.”

That’s where the Shared Ownership Loan Fund, made possible by legislative action in 2023, came into play. Designed to provide affordable, flexible capital tailored to the unique needs of shared ownership enterprises, the fund was able to provide a $310,000 loan to May Day Cafe Workers Cooperative, completing the puzzle for the co-op conversion.

“Ultimately, we see this fund not just as a financing tool,” Skrzydlewski said, “but as part of a broader ecosystem strategy—working in tandem with education, technical assistance, lending partnerships, policy advocacy, and narrative change to normalize and scale shared ownership across the state.”

Cultivating that ecosystem and nurturing collaboration is aligned with others partners’ visions, as well.

“My goal is to see the co-op sector grow across the country, so when I get an applicant, I’m thinking of any option to get them across the finish line,” McCulloch said. “So I find it rewarding to work with people who all came in wanting to make it work and see this happen. With the May Day project, we were asking similar questions and appreciating the other questions people were bringing to the table because it was informing the collective thought process and how to address any issues. The benefit of partnership instead of competition is that we can all share the risk if a project does go south.”

Seeding lasting relationships to cultivate positive outcomes

But the nature of the shared ownership ecosystem makes that less likely. Shaw says the default rate on the city loans is less than 5%—a similarly low rate to MCCD and Shared Capital. “That’s because we’re not just lenders—we’re long-term partners,” Skrzydlewski said. “Because we stay close to the businesses we serve, we can often spot challenges early and step in with support that’s timely, tailored, and rooted in real relationship. When times get tough, they don’t face it alone—we show up, roll up our sleeves, and walk through it with them with actionable recommendations or options that provide flexibility.”

“MCCD reached out to us a number of times saying, ‘We want to help you all out,’” Klein said. “I had the inkling that working with a traditional bank none of this would fly, and I definitely had a sense the whole time that MCCD and the lenders wanted us to succeed. Since all the documents have been signed and we’re emerging from this period of intense urgency to being in operation, we know this is a long term relationship. It’s going to take a long time to pay these loans off—20 years—so we hope that the cooperative will be around for that long and longer.”

“It’s frankly still hard for me to wrap my brain around. None of this would have been possible without the money that we received. It truly wouldn’t be. And now that I’m part of actually running this business two months in, and seeing how hard it is to run a restaurant business, truly no part of this would have been possible without all the players involved.”

Mira Klein

May Day Cafe, worker owner

For Skrzydlewski, May Day Workers Cooperative is a model for what’s possible when we collectively choose a different path—one that preserves jobs, protects the identity of a beloved neighborhood institution, and transfers ownership to the very workers who have helped sustain it.

“May Day Cafe Workers Cooperative’s journey serves as an inspiring and replicable example of how shared ownership can provide sound exit options, bring community members together to support local businesses transitions, and advance economic democracy,” she said.

Learn more about the Shared Ownership Loan Fund here.

Client Highlight: X2 Pastries

When lifelong friends Xiong Xiong and Xiong Thao started X2 Pastries in 2017, they had no plans to open a bakery; they were only looking for supplemental income. For years, Xiong and Xiong spent their weekdays working full-time jobs and their weekends selling baked goods at farmer’s markets across the Twin Cities metro, where their banana bread, sourdough loaves, and macarons quickly became hits among market goers.

With their quickly growing popularity came the need for a larger workspace. In 2021, Xiong and Xiong moved their baking operations from a home kitchen to a shared commercial kitchen. But even this was not enough to meet soaring demand.

By 2023, the business partners had left their full-time jobs to focus on growing X2, and they decided that it was time to find a permanent home to open their own bakery. After securing a 504 loan from the SBA, Xiong and Xiong found the perfect commercial building for sale on St. Clair Avenue in St. Paul. They eventually contacted MCCD in search of the final gap funding needed to make the purchase.

“The real challenge at this time,” according to Xiong Xiong, “was the interest rates.” Xiong and Xiong had spoken with several lenders before approaching MCCD, but they were often facing interest as high as 9%. Working closely with Trish DeAnda, MCCD’s Chief Financial Officer, X2 Pastries applied for a $230,000 gap loan from MCCD, with a rate which Xiong Xiong recalls was “even lower than what we were originally looking for.” The loan was approved in November 2024, and by that December the business partners closed on the purchase of their first commercial property.

Three months later, Xiong and Xiong are moving at the speed of light to renovate the property, which was previously a yoga studio, into their dream bakery. The space will include a retail section for customers to browse through and purchase baked goods that were challenging or impossible to sell at farmer’s markets, especially full cakes. “Now,” Xiong Thao says, “we get to be more creative with what we make and sell.”

The official brick and mortar X2 Pastries will open in May 2025, and they are excited to be a neighborhood bakery in St. Paul’s Macalester-Groveland community. Stay tuned for information on X2’s official opening date on Facebook and Instagram.