MINNEAPOLIS — After serving up bagels and nosh for more than a decade on the border of Minneapolis' Calhoun Lakes and Whittier neighborhoods, Common Roots Café has closed its doors.
In a lengthy post, owner Danny Schwartzman explained that the closure was in part the result of financial challenges, both pre and post-pandemic.
"While we dramatically reduced our monthly losses during the course of the year, the business still will end 2022 with a large financial loss. We are still only operating at roughly half the sales we did prior to the pandemic. Our margins were thin in good times, but there’s absolutely no possibility of the budget working at anywhere near the volume we are at now," Schwartzman wrote.
He added that last week he was informed that staff wanted to unionize, which forced him to "take a fresh look at the overall state of the business."
"I fully support the labor movement and would have loved being able to run a union business," Schwartzman wrote, but said he "couldn’t commit to moving forward if I didn’t have confidence I would be able to keep the business open under all the very many different strains the business is under."
Common Roots, located at the corner of Lyndale Avenue South and West 26th Street, opened in 2007. According to their website, the eatery was operated around the values of supporting local farmers, being environmentally sustainable and providing living wages and benefits for employees.
"I have so very much to be thankful for," Schwartzman said. "I believed our community would rally around a values-driven business as long as we operated with integrity, the food was good, and the space was welcoming. And I was right - you’ve made Common Roots not just a restaurant but a community."
Multiple Twin Cities restaurants have announced their closures in recent months, including Uptown spots Amore Uptown, Williams Uptown Pub & Peanut Bar and Stella's Fish Café & Prestige Oyster Bar this past November.
In August, Lake Street's Schatzlein Saddle Shop closed after 115 years in business. And in Bloomington, David Fong's restaurant closed after 60 years following second-generation owner Ed Fong's retirement announcement.
When Bunny's Bar & Grill shuttered in July after about six years in northeast Minneapolis, co-owners Steve Koch and Gary Rackner said the decision was long in the making.
"I think people, by looking at us certainly, at certain times, it was like, 'Wow, you guys are doing great, you're rocking it.' The problem is the peaks and valleys, and that median just was not there," said Koch.
"Then 2020 came and the wheels fell off, of course, and it's just been tough to regain the ground after that."
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