Niver’s prominence in local restaurants dates to the revered Aquavit at the IDS Center. He co-founded the iconic remake of Town Talk Diner, went on to open Strip Club in St. Paul, Saint Dinette in Lowertown, then Mucci’s. His attempt to bring an upscale deli style restaurant to Lyn Lake, Meyvn, proved a bust, and its conversion to a Mucci’s was undone by the pandemic and civil unrest near the restaurant.

When I spoke to Niver during the lockdowns of 2020, he suggested the pandemic would act almost as a cleansing agent for the restaurant industry. I asked him to revisit the topic at the dawn of 2024. Though Niver is an avowed liberal, he is candid about doing business in a state and city where government seems to view business as a negative force to be harnessed and regulated. We spoke the day after Christmas, as he prepared to face the slowest month of the year. (The interview has been edited for length and clarity.)

Q: Does the restaurant world look as you expected it to, four years past 2020?

A: I was right about some things and was wrong about some things. What I was right about is the financials of the business are more difficult than they have been. Still scraping for what margin we can. I thought it was going to be the roaring twenties when everyone was released out of it, but it didn’t happen. It may have happened other places, but not [the Twin Cities]. And more than COVID, I think George Floyd’s murder changed the way the Cities act, the mood overall. Perceived safety. That was double trouble. So when we got done with the government aid which was paying for payroll increases, then it’s another oh shit moment to find your equilibrium again. With higher prices, so you may see increases in sales, but decreases in customer counts. Most places have raised prices more than once, probably 20%+. Servers are doing OK because all the inflation has raised their tips. But our costs are up more than our menu prices. You do see openings, some high-profile openings. But a lot of closures too. People are still wondering how to make it work.

Q: Did you emerge into 2022 clean or did that period leave you with a lot of debt or other scars?

A: Well, I had a restaurant close in ‘21, so I had that ball and chain and I still do. I have debt from it. I’m negotiating through that. When it was 2008 and I opened the Strip Club, and the economy crashed, the restaurant did fine. There was still some insulation, some corporate spend. This feels like it’s beyond that. So the cities feel empty and hollowed out. I’m glad fewer restaurants closed than imagined, but I think there’s a lot of distress out there. It’s hard to let go, be done, and when you close it, the debt becomes super real because there’s no revenue. So you just try to extend and keep it going. There were periods of hope when you say, oh maybe next summer, maybe the fall. But we haven’t seen it. And inflation really kicks the middle class because they’re not making much more money.

I did a solo podcast episode where I outlined some of the things that were hurting the industry. One prime example is each of my restaurant spends $1,200 a month in Ecolab products. And I don’t see anybody from Ecolab in my restaurants, in the Ecolab building. It would be great for Ecolab to have their headquarters people supporting the city that’s supporting the headquarters, supporting billions in profits. They leave a hole in the city, and I’m paying more for their products. I can buy chemicals elsewhere, but I thought I had a partner. But not in this environment.

Q: How is downtown St. Paul different beyond Ecolab?

A: The retirees that lived in St. Paul in 2016-2018 near Mears Park are gone. They left. Rents came down and the population age and disposable income came down and everything’s flipped for us. [Saint Dinette] didn’t take reservations. We expected people to come and they did. We’d have an hour wait with walk-in business. We saw a bit of slowing before the pandemic, we added reservations, and it helped out. But now there’s no density. We just had the best month we’ve had in six years, but that sucks. It’s been six years to have a great month. And the reason we had so much business was Glow in CHS Field, the Christmas Market at Union Depot, and the Polar Express. So families had three reasons to be here that they don’t typically have. It’s not sustainable everyday business. Lowertown now is a destination not a hangout place. Conventions are still off 50%, in terms of attendees, so they don’t disperse as far. And I know what’s coming in January.

“There’s a lot of pressure for us to fix what’s wrong. Who decided that? Businesses can’t be responsible for making everyone whole.”

Q: Did you see an inverse upside at Mucci’s, which isn’t exposed to downtown’s challenges?

A: I don’t know if we’ve seen that, but it’s been way more consistent. Those folks didn’t move.

Q: There’s obviously a pessimistic vibe here.

A: I don’t like being the negative person, but I feel like there’s not enough people saying what’s going on. People find complaining to be inhospitable. But this industry is in trouble in a lot of ways. It’s harder to overcome challenges. [St. Paul] still has $2 an hour of wage increases to work in. People have given up on a tip credit. We’ve switched over to fees. And that’s confusing for guests because there’s no standard. There’s an easy way to piss off people by having different policies all the time. I ended up not changing anything. I didn’t want to knee jerk into something I’d never done before.

Q: How has delivery and Door Dash affected sit-down restaurants? It used to be if you didn’t want to cook, it was pizza or dine out. Now it’s delivery.

A: Habits changed completely during the pandemic. We bought animals we can’t leave. Two years of not going anywhere changes you. And then you go back and it’s a quarter more expensive. I do the same thing. I do more takeout than I used to. My habits had to change too. And it’s often cheaper to call Trieu Chao and order $40 worth of their cuisine and eat it for two days than go to a grocery store and prepare a fresh meal and have it for one night.

Q: How have wages have evolved?

A: Restaurants employ a lot of people who make the minimum wage because they make 20% tips on top of it. They got big raises [as the minimum wage evolved from $7 to soon $15]. In the [kitchen] we could hire people for under $20 an hour in 2019 and now it’s $22-23, $26-27 in downtown Minneapolis.

Q: You mean for a chef or pedigreed cook?

A: No, I mean a dishwasher. The minimum wage is irrelevant except that it’s soon to be a $15 supplement to people already making $20+ an hour in tips. Servers are doing better than ever because the prices are up and they get a percentage. Servers are awesome and we need them. I’m a server and worked for tips all my life. But it can’t be that the city mandates that the employee benefits so much and the business gets nothing. What is the city doing for businesses? If I had a $4 tip credit so I’d pay $9 an hour instead of $13, do you know what that would do for me? I’m also paying taxes on payroll, so it goes up every time wages rise. Some of it has to stay in the business. What is a business worth if it can’t be open? Who does it employ?

Q: This restaurant [the Lowry] we are in used to employ a host just to hold the door for people. It was their hospitality model. Not anymore.

A: You can’t. But you can only cut back so much. Then it affects your vibe. Your hospitality. These cuts are typically about losing less, not making more.

Q: Is there low-hanging fruit left? Or is the industry more efficient?

A: We’ve had to be. I’m doing everything I can to be lean. I work at Dinette ten hours a week and don’t take any money from it. I bought my partner out. It’s going fine, we’re good managers, but that doesn’t mean everybody is getting what they need out of it. I can’t tell you in one year I’m going to renew my lease if the situation remains status quo. And it’s a great lease—occupancy cost at that restaurant is 6% all-in. But I don’t have the revenue to take advantage of that. A lot of the sweat equity all those years didn’t really pay me. I sold a business but didn’t make any money at it. I don’t know how many people make money in this business.

This whole pandemic thing got me to a point where I’m starting over. Whether it’s without restaurants or with restaurants or just one restaurant, I don’t know. It’s a brand-new game for me. I feel like I don’t take success for granted anymore. And some of the best things I’ve done are past. I’m not expecting a grand outcome. I’m passionate about what I do but that doesn’t mean it turns into dollars. But I’m happier now with less. Why shouldn’t I be? I don’t think it’s so odd what I’ve got or what I have.

Q: What got you into podcasting?

A: I originally did it for me and the businesses. I feel like eight years ago I had some gung-ho chaps who wanted to climb that culinary ladder. After the pandemic, I realized chefs were burnt out. And I hadn’t stepped to the front to be the face of my businesses. I had a lot of people asking me what was up. So I thought it’d be a good way to stamp myself onto those businesses and stay relevant with guests and industry folks. It turned into something different for me. I didn’t realize how much I was going to love it. It causes me to stretch and formulate my opinions better and think about things more deeply and not feel alone. I wish it could be a new [career] for me. But you have to get discovered. I’ve had 1.5 million plays on my videos in the last four months. People come to my restaurant and say, “I love your podcast.”

Q: You’ve used the forum to stir the pot a bit.

A: When I said fuck you to people cancelling reservations last minute, people are like you suck, you’re complaining, putting it on the guest. Well, what about the guest’s accountability? When you cancel at 5 you’re fucking the business and it’s OK as a guest to know what I think. Those things get the most views. I do need to be controversial to get attention. Could I break into something bigger in media? Probably not in this market because everyone has to gladhand and be gentle.

Q: Let’s talk about bad guest habits for a minute.

A: I get a full turn of cancellations over the course of the week. Why did you cancel an eight-top 15 minutes before the reservation? I understand that life happens. Everything is done online or on an app. Most of them show up. But because there is no social interaction there’s less of a sense of responsibility. It’s about having general courtesy as a society. You don’t cancel your haircut fifteen minutes out. We send texts asking for reconfirmation which helps. But there’s labor managing that process. I don’t want to charge you $20 for your [booking]. Would I have gotten your reservation if I had asked for a deposit?

Q: Portion sizes in the U.S. are bigger than everywhere. I realize giving people a third more food doesn’t increase costs by a third. But is one way to reduce menu sticker shock to normalize portion sizes?

A: Whether we like it or not people are seeking value more and more, so I’m not sure. Dinette portions are not oversized. At Mucci’s, it’s flour and water. And what people are used to. If I dropped my 19-ounce lasagna down to 12-ounce and lowered the price, people would probably object. I also like people to take that bit of bucatini home and remember me the next day when they eat it. … We have overcome the free bread thing.

Q: If you don’t renew Dinette’s lease, will you be happy owning only one restaurant?

A: I don’t want to open another restaurant. Not right now. I have ideas. Couple of named concepts. I think the way I’ve evolved through this is I’ve found some time again for my life. I’ve aged into this business and matured in it. I don’t need to keep creating. It’s always what’s next, but that model is hard to sustain right now. I got a lot of gas left in the tank. I looked outside the industry. Maybe if the business doesn’t need to support me it might do better. But I don’t have the motivation for a new restaurant …. Unless somehow there was a real estate aspect to it.

Q: What about landlords and leases? Has the pandemic changed things?

A: I think they are a bit more aware that making a good [lease] for a business in their building will behoove them because they will last the full ten years of the lease and they’ll make some money every year.

Q: Minneapolis is creating a labor standards board. Hospitality seems to be in its sights. The mayor told one restaurateur that restaurants are the No. 1 business category for labor-related complaints. There’s a perception in the activist community that this is an exploitive business. Is regulating restaurants a path to making the industry more amenable to build careers in, or is it just another step toward making it unsustainable?

A: My businesses aren’t exploitive. Most restaurant jobs are second jobs or supplemental jobs. Most people who get cut early are looking forward to it. Employees find convenience in things the mayor’s office may find exploitative. I don’t know why the city’s trying to run my business so much. Are you going to solve bad management through rules? There should be paths for employees to resolve problems. But what are the complaints and are they legitimate? I was invited to a roundtable discussion at the mayor’s office during the tip credit debate and the main questions were about sexual harassment and wage theft. I asked what are we here for? It sounds like your agenda is to not have these businesses around, to make all wages even, to end tipping. Why me? Why this industry? People don’t like it when the industry is profitable. They feel like they’re being taken for a ride. And these folks are continually trying to get in the business of making my business better and they’re not helping. These folks ended up not needing this minimum wage increase and no one was making minimum anyway when the whole thing happened. I’m liberal but I don’t need people in my business all the time.

Q: Hasn’t the lesson of the last five years been the market works? There was a massive exodus of workers during the pandemic for work-from-home. Wages have gone up exponentially as a result of market forces. If you don’t like your job in a restaurant today, you can find another higher paying one across the street.

A: Right. Why are they focusing on this industry? I don’t really know. Also, different types of restaurants are different types of business. There’s a lot of trying to make it equal for everybody and it’s not going to work. How does a business like mine not cut somebody? It’s hard enough to pay sick time when I have to bring another person in and pay them too. They loved us during the pandemic… “don’t close, please don’t close.” Saint Dinette loves St. Paul more than St. Paul loves Dinette. Businesses shouldn’t have to take care of everything. I think society should take care of some of this. There’s a lot of pressure for us to fix what’s wrong. Who decided that? Businesses can’t be responsible for making everyone whole. Sick time, biodegradable packages, no tip credit. Mayor Carter told us. What’s the city done? City employees got a raise and licensing fees went up. So I paid for that.

Epstein, veteran research analyst for Bank of America, was unsparing in his criticism of Boeing and its vendor partner, Spirit AeroSystems, following the early January episode that left a hole in the fuselage of the Boeing 737 Max 9.

The pilot crew safely landed the plane, and no passenger or crew lives were lost. But the door episode with the new Boeing airplane has left regulators, analysts, the flying public, and other stakeholders asking what’s gone wrong at Boeing.

This incident with the Boeing 737 Max 9 follows the 2018 and 2019 crashes of Boeing 737 Max planes in which 346 people were killed.

“Culture isn’t found in an employee handbook,” wrote Epstein in a January analyst report. In addition to being a veteran equity analyst, Epstein holds a master’s degree and Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Duke University and an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

He argued that Boeing needs a “drastic” cultural overhaul. “This cultural change won’t come from FAA mandates, congressional hearings, internal memos, or one-hour all hands meetings,” Epstein wrote. In his critique, he included Boeing supplier Spirit AeroSystems, which is based in Wichita, Kansas.

“For culture to move from corporate jargon to being embodied in the habits and minds of both workforces, we see it as necessary for Boeing and Spirit to drastically rethink the ways they have operated,” Epstein wrote. “For each to achieve a true cultural shift, reigniting engineering culture and rebuilding employee trust are paramount.”

Because the design, construction, and maintenance of airplanes affect human lives, he stresses the need to prioritize the safety concerns and procedures of engineers over business executives who may want to pursue less costly paths to maximize profits.

“Boeing and Spirit’s engineering prowess has waned due to an obsession with financial metrics bolstered by cost cutting and cash flow generation,” Epstein wrote. “Did anyone ever start an innovative company with the end goal of optimizing share repurchases and paying a dividend? It’s our view both companies should look to promote product development-oriented engineers to the highest levels of decision making to map the road ahead which can restore their names as engineering titans.”

The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that bolts needed to secure the door of the Alaska Airlines jet that blew off “appear to have been missing when the plane left Boeing’s factory.”

The door was manufactured in Spirit’s Malaysian factory. “Boeing opened or removed the door plug after the 737 Max 9 jet’s fuselage [made by Spirit] arrived at the plane maker’s Renton, Wash., factory for final assembly,” the Journal reported.

Top Boeing executives previously were based in Washington state close to the company’s large manufacturing facilities. But Boeing moved its headquarters to Chicago in 2001 and to Arlington, Virginia, in 2023. A North Charleston, South Carolina, plant opened in 2011.

Bank of America’s Epstein maintains that leaders of Boeing and Spirit AeroSystems should “repair relationships” with their workforces. “We view it as necessary for both to focus on retaining and attracting the brightest young engineers with interesting work and competitive pay in an open and nonthreatening environment,” Epstein wrote. “At their core, both are aircraft companies. If they are successful at delivering the finest aircraft in the world, success as measured by all stakeholders will follow, including shareholders.”

Delta sidesteps some key Boeing problems

Like many major airlines, Delta Air Lines operates Boeing and Airbus planes.

But Atlanta-based Delta doesn’t have any Boeing Max models currently in its fleet. Consequently, Delta, the dominant carrier at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, avoided taking planes out of service this month after the Alaska Airlines episode happened.

Several years ago, Delta also managed to sidestep operational issues associated with the introduction of Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner to the marketplace.

Before Delta acquired Eagan-based Northwest Airlines in a 2008 merger, Northwest had touted the fact that it planned to be the North American launch customer for the Dreamliner.

Northwest had an order for 18 Boeing 787s. Following the merger of the two carriers, Delta didn’t proceed with the order.

The decision to bypass the Boeing 787 meant that Delta didn’t have to deal with grounding of planes in 2013 when problems surfaced with batteries in the 787.

Delta also didn’t jump on the bandwagon for Boeing’s Max aircraft.

In 2013, then-Delta CEO Richard Anderson told Reuters that he would take his time to evaluate the performance of the Boeing 737 Max.

“We’d rather get toward the end of a production line” and purchase planes after any early problems are resolved with a new aircraft model type, Anderson said in the interview in New York.

“We would rather see proven products that have cash-on-cash returns from the moment we take delivery,” Anderson said.

GE cost-cutting culture overtakes Boeing

Airline industry insiders, journalists, and analysts have noted that Boeing’s post World War II reputation for making commercial aircraft was exceptional because engineers held power within the company, and they were committed to making the best and safest planes.

They say a culture shift occurred following Boeing’s acquisition of McDonnell Douglas in 1997 and the CEO tenure of Harry Stonecipher, a former General Electric executive who focused on reducing expenses. He led the combined company from late 2003 until early 2005 when the Boeing board asked him to resign after it was determined Stonecipher was in a relationship with a Boeing female executive.

Boeing’s CFO became the interim CEO for a brief period. Then Boeing’s board selected W. James McNerney Jr. to become the aerospace company’s chairman, president, and CEO.

McNerney wasn’t an engineer or scientist. He earned a bachelor’s degree in American studies from Yale and an MBA from Harvard. But he was serving on Boeing’s board when he was chosen to become CEO, and he had a General Electric pedigree. He worked for GE for nearly two decades, making his mark while leading the aircraft engines business.

In a January essay in The New York Times, journalist Bill Saporito outlined McNerney’s role in the development of the 737 Max. McNerney was CEO of Boeing from June 2005 to July 2015.

In 2011, Saporito wrote, McNerney “made what became a fateful decision by greenlighting the 737 Max rather than investing billions in developing a new short-haul aircraft.”

Saporito views that 2011 decision as having a cascading negative effect upon Boeing to the present day.

“Mr. McNerney’s decision meant rushing development of the 737 Max while managing the Federal Aviation Administration so that the certification of the redesigned jet — whose engines had been physically moved forward—would not require retraining of pilots, thus saving customers time and money,” Saporito wrote. “Being good at managing the agency charged with ensuring your product’s safety can put the whole process at cross-purposes. That, combined with the decline in the company’s other competencies, contributed to the two fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019 that prompted the 737 Max’s grounding for nearly two years. And even before the Alaska Airlines 737 Max 9 incident, Boeing had been having significant problems assembling its 787 Dreamliner on its South Carolina production line.”

Following McNerney’s retirement, Boeing was led by Dennis Muilenburg, an Iowa native who had degrees in aerospace engineering and aeronautics and astronautics. He was in charge when the two fatal air crashes occurred. In late 2019, he left Boeing after he was roundly criticized for the way Boeing responded to the tragedies.

“Just over a year later, in early 2021, Muilenburg launched a new investment venture: New Vista Acquisition Corp., headquartered in the Cayman Islands to avoid taxes,” according to an article by veteran Seattle Times aerospace reporter Dominic Gates, who was part of the Pulitzer Prize winning team of reporters that exposed design flaws in the 737 Max.

In early 2023, Gates reported that New Vista “has failed and will liquidate without ever making an investment.”

Today, Boeing’s CEO is David Calhoun, who took the leadership reins after Muilenburg’s departure. Calhoun, who had a 26-year career at GE, has been on Boeing’s board since 2009.

McNerney’s cost controls provide through line at 3M, Boeing

While it’s been almost 19 years since McNerney was CEO of Maplewood-based 3M, his imprint on the corporation surfaced in an October Wall Street Journal story.

Boeing engineers contended their power and decision-making ability often was overridden by cost-conscious executives, including McNerney, in recent decades.

Similar concerns were expressed by 3M scientists and engineers in the Wall Street Journal story headlined “The Long Dry Spell at One of America’s Most Innovative Companies.”

The 2023 article said that 3M researchers “are encouraged to pursue incremental improvements to existing products rather than novel, swing-for-the fences breakthroughs.”

Rob Kieschke, a former 3M research director who left the company in 2022, was quoted as saying that elements of McNerney’s approach remain part of 3M’s culture. “McNerney installed ‘Six Sigma,’ a regimen used at GE to measure and standardize business practices but loathed by 3M researchers as a creativity killer,” the article said.

McNerney’s history at 3M trailed him to Boeing. A 2014 article in the Seattle Times examined McNerney’s record at both GE and 3M.

A 3M manager said that McNerney’s attention to cost efficiencies led to “significantly greater [profit] margins,” while a Post-it note inventor said innovation declined drastically on McNerney’s watch.

In recent months, 3M has been dealing with large payouts to address litigation over its production of forever chemicals. Meanwhile, Boeing is in the early weeks of responding to the fallout of its 737 Max 9 door malfunction.

Journalist Saporito described a course correction for Boeing in his New York Times analysis piece.

“What Boeing has missed, as it tried to dump costs and speed production, was the chance to ensure that safety was a cultural core and a competitive advantage,” Saporito wrote. “When employees know they’ll be supported in building the safest possible aircraft as opposed to the cheapest, the end product will benefit—and buyers will have more confidence.”

Liz Fedor previously covered the airline industry for seven years at the Star Tribune.

After immigrating to the U.S. from Venezuela in 2016, chef Soleil Ramirez worked for three years at The Lexington in St. Paul before opening the Twin Cities’ first authentic Venezuelan restaurant inside Midtown Global Market in early 2021. The business received overwhelmingly positive reviews and led to Ramirez opening a sister restaurant, Crasqui, in St. Paul last year.

Three years after opening, Ramirez announced on social media “with a heavy heart and a lot of good vibes and happiness” that her business was ending its run inside Midtown Global Market, citing safety concerns for her employees and customers as the main reason for her departure.

“We were dealing with a lot of things, and if something happened to one of my employees, I would never forgive myself,” Ramirez said in her announcement video. “Coming from a country with a lot of violence, I have seen many things, and I don’t want to go through that experience again.”

People will still be able to get a hold of Ramirez’ creations. She is transitioning Arepa Bar into a catering business — including online ordering and event opportunities — that will operate out of her second restaurant beginning in March.

In a statement, a spokesperson for Neighborhood Development Center, which owns the market, acknowledged the community will miss Arepa Bar, but said as restaurants come and go, the building continues to be a safe place for people to explore the world locally.

“Midtown Global Market has served as a small business incubator whose mission is to provide opportunities to aspiring entrepreneurs,” the statement read. “Arepa Bar and Soleil Ramirez have been a part of our dynamic community and we wish her the best as she continues her business journey at her new St. Paul restaurant, Crasqui.”

Overall crime in Minneapolis has decreased in the three years since Arepa Bar’s opening, including a roughly 56% drop in carjackings and a 44% decrease in shots fired calls, according to city data. However, that improvement has not been seen equally across the city.

There were 42 police incidents within a two-mile radius of Midtown Global Exchange last year, the vast majority of which being vehicle thefts, according to Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) data. While that number is not an outlier compared to other neighborhoods in the city, Midtown Phillips’s crime rate in several categories has not declined in the past three years.

Lake Street Council has allocated nearly $2 million from the city’s budget toward public safety efforts in the area, including efforts to hire a safety coordinator, build a community center, create murals, and improve lighting. However, according to Lake Street Council’s placemaking and activation manager Charise Canales, making large-scale safety improvements does not take away from the impact crime can have on individuals.

“We have to really be cognizant of lived experiences of businesses and employees,” Canales said. “Lake Street Council and the partners we work with are really committed to continuing to address public safety so we can support our businesses to stay and thrive in this corridor, because it’s so special. It’s such a special place where folks from all over the world can make a home.”

Crime — or the perception thereof — is just one challenge, though. Like downtown Minneapolis, the market has had a tough time adjusting to the rapid adoption of remote work, having lost a good chunk of regular customers who used to report to Allina Health’s nearby headquarters each weekday.

Lived experiences

Next door to Arepa Bar inside Midtown Global Market sits Pham’s Rice Bowl, where owner Trung Pham has been serving family recipes since the market’s opening 17 years ago.

As a restaurant serving comfort Asian cuisine, Pham’s business could not have been more different from Ramirez’ upscale Venezuelan menu — and that was the best part. Vendors inside Midtown are not competitors due to their unique offerings, which allows owners like Pham and Ramirez to speak every day and learn cooking techniques from one another.

“I love Soleil, she’s been a wonderful neighbor to me,” Pham said. “And she’s an awesome chef, and so it really creates that buzz. Whenever there’s a positive news about a restaurant that’s doing well, it directly impacts all of us.”

However, while Ramirez’ cooking stems from her cultural roots, Pham said comments like hers hurt the market that helped grow Arepa Bar into a success.

“All of us here are family-owned businesses, a lot of us put a lot of sweat and effort into making this work,” Pham said. “By one fell swoop, one statement … becomes the running theme of Midtown Global Market.”

Any major city is forced to grapple with crime, Pham said. In the nearly two decades he has been in Midtown, Pham has witnessed an occasional shoplift and one car break-in after he left his daughter’s backpack visible in his backseat, something Pham called “a crime of opportunity.”

“I’ve been here 17 years, if I didn’t feel safe here, I would not be here,” Pham said. “When there’s a portrayal of crime in South Minneapolis, we’re the face of it. We’re going to get the negative fallout from that.”

Pham walked over to Manny’s Tortas across the market, where owner Manuel Gonzalez prepared food for him. Gonzalez came to Lake Street more than 40 years ago and joins Pham as two of the four original restaurants inside the market.

Gonzalez sat alongside photos of celebrity chefs including Robert Irvin and Guy Fieri visiting his restaurant. Despite the market’s popularity and external success, Gonzalez said fear is a narrative Lake Street has been forced to fight for decades.

“Lake Street, a lot of people thought it’s dangerous,” Gonzalez said. “Now, with this coming, it’s going to be even worse.”

The roughly six-mile stretch of road has long been famous for its historic diversity and cultural inclusivity. However, Lake Street became scarred by soot and outrage due to its proximity to MPD’s former Third Precinct building.

The precinct had a years-long reputation for misconduct against minority communities and was where former officer Derek Chauvin was assigned when he murdered George Floyd in 2020. The building was boarded up following civil unrest.

Now, some of Minneapolis’ most vulnerable communities are forced to fight discrimination and hurtful narratives in addition to the already enormous responsibility of owning a business, Gonzalez said.

“This avenue is pretty unique, there’s a lot of entrepreneurs, especially immigrant entrepreneurs, that make this place work,” Gonzalez said. “They’re showing that this place is a destination.”

Editor’s note: A previous version of this story noted that the Third Precinct building had been razed. The story has been updated.

The company manufactures siding, roofing and aluminum soffits, trim and gutter products. The fall in demand was noticeable.

But as interest rates peaked and then began falling a bit toward late 2023, the market – maybe not yet so much in Minnesota, but in areas served by the siding, roofing and aluminum exterior product manufacturer – definitely started rebounding, said John Lewis, president and CEO of EDCO Enterprises.

“Our take is they’re (interest rates) likely to continue to ease a bit,” he said. “Maybe not to the good old days of 2.5% mortgages, but a kind of stabilizing and moderating that is healthy for our business.”

Lewis said EDCO expects 2024 to be good. Maybe not the best of times, but definitely not the worst of times either.

“For our business, stability and moderating interest rates are pretty helpful,” Lewis said.

Uncertainty, but no panic

Lewis may be slightly more optimistic than some in the manufacturing industry. Enterprise Minnesota, which supports the state’s manufacturing industry, does an annual state of the industry survey and in 2023 manufacturers expressed significant concerns about many issues, including new legislation around paid sick and safe time, paid leave and cannabis in the workplace and indicated that such rules make Minnesota a less attractive place to do business.

Twice as many manufacturers see 2024 as a likely time of recession than a time of expansion, the survey indicates. Yet, 86% of respondents were confident in the financial future of their companies.

Concerns around inflation and of being able to hire qualified workers have decreased as well according to the survey.

“I think the tagline would be conservative caution,” said Bob Kill, president and CEO of Enterprise Minnesota. “As much as inflation is down, it’s still real. It’s much more real in rural Minnesota than it is in the metro.”

There still are concerns for an economic downturn, as well, and there are significant concerns, he said, about the lack of exemption for small businesses on mandatory paid leave.

“It’s going to be brutal for those very small companies,” Kill said. “I predict that something will get done to relieve those very small companies, but the fact that they have the same mandates as a large company that probably already meets the qualifications is a lack of appreciation for small and very small businesses.”

That said, Kill adds that he is seeing some businesses shift their thinking a bit toward investing, pursuing growth through new customers and markets, which had slowed significantly during and immediately after the pandemic.

“Historically, the best companies make moves when there’s challenge,” Kill said. “We know of companies right now that are making small acquisitions. Our people in the area of planning and revenue growth are as busy as they’ve ever been.”

That fits the small business mentality where if companies can control their own fate, they believe they’ll be fine.

“If it’s under their control, they feel they can accomplish it and overcome it,” he said. “It’s a challenge if it’s not – that’s when they start getting nervous.”

Supply chain stabilized

EDCO has been investing in new equipment and technology in recent years, implanting a new enterprise resource planning system, adding a paint line at a coil coating facility and investing in a new siding production line.

The company is seeing the fruits of those investments starting to pay off. Another factor in its solid 2023 was continued stabilization of supply chains. The company struggled throughout the COVID pandemic and the early portions of the recovery due to the scarcity of products.

“We had difficulty sourcing some key materials, aluminum and paint, cardboard, that we need to make, package and deliver our products,” Lewis said. “Beginning in 2023 and into 2023 that all eased up substantially.”

That should continue into 2024, said Emily LeVasseur, co-founder and managing director at Waypost Advisors, which helps middle market companies with supply chain issues.

In mid-2023, LeVasseur had concerns about the potential for a bankruptcy filing by Yellow, a lower-priced less-than-truckload shipper and of contract talks among United Parcel Services (UPS) workers going bad.

Yellow did file bankruptcy and is in the process of liquidating, but UPS workers reached a contract. Labor issues that were a mess in early 2023 have also stabilized a bit, with more workers signing on and not leaving within a month of being hired.

“Manufacturers are really feeling like they’re getting back to a stable state,” LeVasseur said. “Purchase prices on materials are flattening out. We’re seeing there is still some inflation in certain markets, but for the most part things will keep up with normal inflation fees and not crazy.”

No more dire predictions

Michael Rosow, a financial services attorney at Maslon LLP and member of the Global Executive Board at the Turnaround Management Association, represents clients in loan workouts, creditor remedies and bankruptcies, primarily on the lender side.

The turnaround industry, he said, has been predicting the next recession “is right around the corner since about 2015,” he said. “They, including myself, have been wrong for five to eight years.”

From about 2011 through the pandemic, there were historically few loan workouts and bankruptcies. A blip during COVID was mitigated significantly by government programs that assisted companies. That money has been running out at the same time interest rates have increased, so he expects to see an increase in distressed companies in 2024.

Small businesses, for example, that were paying 3% on a $1 million loan that are now paying 8% might not have the extra $50,000 they have to come up with to make their payments, he said. The multiplier effect will start to take place as that company backs up payments to other small companies who, in turn, will have to do the same to their vendors.

“It’s going to hurt the next tier of companies just as those companies are having increased borrowing costs too,” he said.

Now, that said, such an increase in distressed companies would really be bringing that back up to a historically normal level.

“We’ve been at such low levels of distress, money has been free,” he said. “You could always go down the street to get a new loan. You could always get more equity financing. We’re going to be returning to an environment where a more normal number of companies go into economic distress.”

And, Rosow said, despite the gloomy picture, he is not predicting doom and gloom for small businesses overall.

“I would say back in 2017, 2018 people in my industry were talking about a tidal wave or a tsunami being right around the corner,” he said. We were certainly talking about that in April of 2020. I don’t hear people talking about that kind of situation nearly as much anymore.”

The distressed deals he is seeing are happening tend to be with companies that already have other issues exacerbating the increased lending costs, such as construction companies with cost overruns from a project, a service company that took on a job they didn’t have the experience to manage or any business that was overleveraged with debt.

In general, he suspects companies that are doing fine will probably be fine throughout the year.

“I think it would be overly pessimistic to say that a significant economic downturn is inevitable,” he said. “A pause, a period of slower growth and a taking of temperature and resetting of expectations are likely to occur. But I don’t know that a recession is inevitable.”

Conditions improving for funding

Interest rate decreases toward the end of 2023 helped increase demand for lending, said Susan Anderson, senior vice president at VisionBank. She’s hopeful those rates will remain at least flat and maybe decrease a bit more.

“The interest rate has really limited the affordability of properties for investors, for owner-users,” she said.

The venture capital funding pipeline was significantly slowed nationwide throughout 2023 due to a slow market for companies filing initial public offerings. That clogged every level of the equity funding cycle.

But Reed Robinson, founding partner of Groove Capital, said this will drive favorable terms for firms with capital to invest. He cited Berkshire Hathaway Chair Warren Buffet, who once said “Be greedy when others are fearful,” Robinson said. “Now is the time to be greedy.”

“If you are in the game, now is the time to acquire positions at suppressed valuations,” he said, adding that Groove is poised to make deals when terms are favorable. “The goal is to buy low, in teams that can produce a lot with limited resources and hold until conditions begin to thaw.”

Better times ahead

There’s some sense that if companies can make it through a good-but-not-great 2024, that better times may be ahead in 2025.

LeVasseur sees some additional bankruptcies and consolidation in the trucking industry starting to push rates up through the latter part of the year, so she advises companies to lock in contracts now to the extent possible.

A lot of companies are spending some time stabilizing inventory issues that had gotten out of whack in recent years.

“We could be looking at maybe not a tremendous year in 2024, but we’re not expecting the sky to fall at this point,” she said. “And things might stabilize enough where 2025 could actually be pretty good. I’m hearing that in a lot of different places.”

EDCO remains optimistic heading forward, as well. The company is pretty conservative financially, Lewis said, but will continue making investments out of its cash flow to remain debt free. Coming off of one of its best years ever in 2023, the company thinks it’s setting itself up to do even better as economic stability improves.

“Sometimes the market doesn’t work in your favor,” Lewis said. “But I think if you stay on offense and keep trying to fight to improve your business and improve market share in tough times and go with the flow in good times; that tends to be a reasonable recipe for continuing to grow.”

She said the agency will look into using inspectors from the Office of Medical Cannabis and the Department of Agriculture to exercise the Office of Cannabis Management’s authority to stop the sale of cannabis flower that is illegal marijuana masquerading as legal hemp.

“OCM is evaluating how to leverage existing enforcement capacity at the Office of Medical Cannabis to act on OCM’s behalf and how we can develop capacity to test raw cannabis flower,” Briner said.

“We’ll be sharing more about those plans as we put them in place,” she said.

To be legal to sell now, hemp flower must contain only 0.3% THC Delta 9 or less. Such hemp plants do not have enough THC to be intoxicating when eaten or smoked. But by processing the hemp for edibles and beverages, the THC content can be enhanced to produce an intoxicating effect.

Some hemp retailers and smoke shops have been selling raw cannabis flower that might or might not exceed those legal limits. Hemp inspectors have not acted against such sales — or even test the flower — because while the Office of Medical Cannabis regulates hemp sales, the law doesn’t give it any authority over unprocessed flower. 

The plan to address the gap was discussed Thursday during a meeting between state regulators and leaders of the associations representing county sheriffs and local police chiefs. While the new cannabis law envisioned civil regulation of recreational marijuana, it also foresaw law enforcement retaining its role in enforcing major crimes such as illegal trafficking of cannabis.

Local police could act against questionable sales of raw cannabis flower. Whether local law enforcement has the interest or capacity to do so in the interim period between illegal and legal sales has been in question.

Briner called the meeting Thursday productive and said it will lead to ongoing communications between state regulators and local law enforcement as the complicated law gets implemented.

“I expect it will be the first of many with them about our respective enforcement roles for both this transitional period, and on an ongoing basis,” she said.

The problem emerged from the way House File 100, the massive recreational marijuana law, provided for the transition to legalization. Possessing and growing small amounts of marijuana became legal Aug. 1, but the retail sale of the same drug won’t be allowed until the cannabis management office drafts rules and issues licenses. That isn’t expected for another 15 months.

Over the same transition period, the Office of Medical Cannabis is charged with regulating the hemp edibles and beverages business that was made legal in 2022. But the temporary authority in HF 100 to regulate hemp products only included products made by processing hemp, not the raw flower itself.

That gap in the law has allowed some hemp retailers to sell raw flower that might — or might not — exceed the THC potency limits that separate legal hemp from illegal marijuana. And because the Office of Medical Cannabis doesn’t have the power to regulate raw flower, inspectors can’t take samples to see if it is legal or illegal.

That’s where Briner’s proposed solution comes in. The Office of Cannabis Management has the legal authority to stop illegal flower sales but not the staff to do so. It can essentially contract with the Office of Medical Cannabis and the Department of Agriculture that regulates hemp on the farm to empower its inspectors to exercise OCM’s authority over illegal marijuana sales. Government calls such arrangements interagency agreements.

Illegal sales are subject to civil penalties under the new recreational marijuana law.

All of this is temporary. Once the Office of Cannabis Management issues retail sales licenses, those retailers will be allowed to sell the types of intoxicating cannabis flower that cannot legally be sold now.

Briner acknowledged the frustration among some hemp retailers who are trying to follow the law but are competing with stores that are selling raw cannabis flower that might well be illegal. She also asked for patience, as it will take a few months to get the agreements and the testing capacity set up.

The Legislature could solve the problem itself when it convenes Feb. 12 by amending the law and giving the Office of Medical Cannabis authority to regulate raw cannabis flower in addition to edibles and beverages. But if the interagency agreements are already set up once the session gets in full swing, such a legal change wouldn’t be needed.

Candy Murnion remembers vividly the event that pushed her to open her first day care business in Jordan, a town of fewer than 400 residents in a sea of grassland in eastern Montana.

Garfield County’s public health nurse, one of few public health officials serving the town and nearly 5,000 square miles that surround it, had quit because she had given birth to her second child and couldn’t find day care.

“My primary goal was to give families a safe place to take their children so they could work if they needed to,” said Murnion, 63. She started in 2015 with eight slots, the maximum she could cover herself, and slowly grew. Then, during the COVID-19 pandemic, a surge in federal aid to child care programs helped her raise wages for her workers and expand to a second facility.

Today, her day care programs, the only ones in Jordan, can serve up to 30 children, ranging from 6 weeks old to school age. But after that pandemic-era funding support ended in September, Murnion began to wonder how long she could sustain her expanded capacity, or whether she’d need to raise prices or lower enrollment.

And she isn’t alone.

Data collected prior to the pandemic shows that more than half of Americans lived in neighborhoods classified as child care deserts, areas that have no child care providers or where there are more than three children in the community for every available licensed care slot. Other research shows parents and child care providers in rural areas face unique barriers. Access to quality child care programs and early education is linked to better educational and behavioral outcomes for kids and can also help link families and children to immunizations, health screenings, and greater food security by providing meals and snacks.

Policymakers and researchers now fear that inequitable child care access threatens the sustainability and longevity of rural communities.

“If we want to keep rural parts of this country alive and thriving, we need to address this,” said Linda Smith, director of the Early Childhood Initiative at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.

According to an October report that Smith co-authored, there is a 35% gap between the need for and availability of child care programs in rural areas, compared with 29% in urban areas, based on data from 35 states.

The report echoed concerns local, state, and national experts have raised for a number of years.

A report published last year by the National Advisory Committee on Rural Health and Human Services found that, per capita, more parents rely on family members or friends for child care in rural areas than in urban areas. This isn’t sustainable for parents, said Cara James, CEO and president of Grantmakers in Health, a nonprofit that helps guide health philanthropy.

“Right now, we have a system that’s very expensive for people who can afford it and for people who can access it, not necessarily available to all those who need it,” James said. “That’s leading us to rely on other workarounds that are not ideal or ones that are giving the children the best support that they need to grow into healthy adults.”

For example, according to a state report, Montana’s total child care capacity met 44% of estimated demand in 2021 and infant care capacity met only 34% of estimated demand. Garfield County had only 23% of potential demand for children under six. Nationally, the rural health advisory committee has found, child care deserts are most likely to be located in “low-income rural census tracts.”

The dearth of child care in many rural communities exacerbates workforce shortages by forcing parents, including those who work in health care locally, to stay home as full-time caregivers, and by preventing younger workers and families from putting down roots there.

Eighty-six percent of parents in rural areas who are not working or whose partner is not working said in a 2021 Bipartisan Policy Center survey that child care responsibilities were a reason why, while 45% said they or their spouse cared for at least their youngest child. Staying home to care for children is a responsibility that disproportionately falls on women, affecting their ability to participate in the workforce and make an independent living.

A report from the rural health advisory committee shows that when center-based care is readily available in a community, the percentage of mothers who use that type of care and are employed doubles from 11% to 22%.

According to the Biden administration, pandemic emergency funding increased maternal labor workforce participation, stabilized employment and increased wages for child care workers, tempered costs for families, and helped providers afford their facilities.

That funding included $52 billion in emergency aid allocated by Congress for child care program owners and low-income families. Murnion’s day care was one of an estimated 30,000 in rural counties that received federal grants.

She said the roughly $100,000 she received in federal aid allowed her to raise wages for her workers to $13 an hour and expand her facility space. She said she doesn’t take a paycheck from the business and instead relies on income from a family ranch and trucking business.

Now that the federal aid programs have expired, Murnion and other child care operators nationwide are wrestling with how to sustain those wages without hiking the cost of care for parents.

The Biden administration requested congressional approval of $16 billion to extend the pandemic-era child care stabilization program but doesn’t have enough support to continue the funding, despite nearly 80% of voters supporting increasing federal funding for states to expand their child care programs.

According to the administration, the funding would support more than 220,000 child care providers in the U.S. that collectively serve more than 10 million kids. Montana would receive an estimated additional $46 million if Congress approved the request.

Although federal aid helped Murnion get through the pandemic, she said she doesn’t want to rely on the government forever. She charges parents $30 a day for one child and $22 a day each for siblings. And she doesn’t charge parents for days their children don’t attend. If she does need to raise prices, Murnion said, she’ll increase the per-sibling cost.

The pandemic provided some meaningful lessons, said Smith of the Bipartisan Policy Center. “Those stabilization grants were, I think, a key to what we actually need to do with child care down the road.”

The number of child care programs has grown since before the pandemic in most states, but the employee count per facility has decreased. The federal cash infusion helped child care employment rebound after a 35% dip at the beginning of the pandemic. By November 2022, the number of workers in child care jobs had climbed to 92% of the pre-pandemic level.

In the best circumstances, Smith said, parents would pay more for child care, and the corresponding supply or availability of programs would increase. But because parents are struggling to keep up with the rising costs, which in some places can be more than in-state college tuition, supply is stagnant.

Smith said the end of federal aid programs kicked the issue back to state and local governments. “I think most people would agree that what we need is some type of funding that goes to the programs to keep it so that they can do what they need to do and not charge the parents for it,” she said.

Some state and local governments are doing so. In Alabama, lawmakers approved $42 million last year in the state budget for child care. The Missouri state legislature approved $160 million for child care. Voters in rural Warren, Minnesota, narrowly approved a half-percent sales tax to support a child care center that was struggling to stay open.

During last year’s legislative session, Montana lawmakers and Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte approved new laws to improve child care access, including removing state licensing requirements for small in-home day cares and expanding a program that helps lower-income families pay for child care.

“You can’t sit here in Washington, D.C., and figure out how you’re going to get child care out in eastern Montana,” Smith said. “It just doesn’t work.”

The godfather of the local craft brewing scene will stay involved with the company as a board member and brand ambassador, meeting regularly with distributor and retailer partners and staying abreast of goings on at the Legislature.

As Stutrud prepares for at least a partial retirement, he reflected on the transition he made in the early and mid-1980s from chemical dependency counselor to craft brewer, with his desire to re-establish a “true beer culture” in the U.S., sharing the ups and downs that brought Summit to be.

He also opined on the current state of craft brewing in the state and on the burgeoning THC beverage market, which has grown significantly since May 2022 when the Legislature legalized the sale of hemp derived THS edibles in mainstream retail grocery and convenience stores. It’s a market Summit is studying and may enter at some point, but likely not in its current form.

When he was starting out, Stutrud spent years studying the industry before opening Summit. He spent vacation time from his job doing apprenticeships with brewers like Bill Newman, founder of the now defunct William S. Newman Brewing Co. in Albany, New York and creator of English ales Stutrud says were ahead of his time.

He sought allies and mentors like Charlie McElevey, the founding master brewer of Redhook in Seattle who was originally from Grand Marais, but was schooled in brewing in Freising, Germany at the Technical University of Munich; and local master brewers like Fred Thomasser and Paul Hauwiller, who both retired from the Schmidt Brewery.

And, ultimately, he attended the Siebel Institute of Technology in Chicago, one of the last surviving brewing schools in the country – all in the name of making sure he knew his stuff before going into the business.

Stutrud spoke with MinnPost. His comments are edited for brevity and space.

MinnPost: Congratulations on reaching retirement. What will you be doing now?

Mark Stutrud: My job description moving forward is pretty clear cut. I’m out there loving customers and working with distributors. The distributors are our first customer.

And then the retail customers are next in line, although I spend the majority of my time, 80% on the retail level. And that’s really where it happens for us. And that’s where I like to be connected and keep my ears open and make sure that we’re supporting their sales. Because right now, liquor stores, they’re experiencing a slump not only in beer sales, but alcohol sales overall. It’s a matter of staying in touch with a lot of the customers.

MP: Take me back to the beginning – what made you decide to leave a steady career in chemical dependency counseling for what at the time was a nearly non-existent craft beer industry?

Stutrud: I moved from North Dakota to the Twin Cities in 1980. I took a position at St. Mary’s Hospital where, after a few months, I accepted the position of being the supervisor of the evaluation unit of the Adolescent Chemical Dependency Program at the time.

And so, I was in charge of 12, 14 staff, not only in charge of the budget, but also the clinical supervision, which was a lot. And then I had a bunch of nurses that wanted to be therapists, and I don’t know, it was a total of, I guess, 70 beds.

So, for me, in that career path, the next step would’ve been a director of some program. And by that time, I’d had almost eight and a half years of inpatient treatment experience in hospital-based settings. And also, back to 1982, that’s when I started fantasizing about what I was going to do with myself.

I thought about going to medical school and going towards psychiatry. I had an accelerated degree. I thought about going into private practice. And then the third option was just this wild, crazy idea of starting a brewery. I was a home brewer. And through that hobby, I started really digging into learning about some of these great pioneers that started up. The last two years I was at St. Mary’s Hospital, all my vacation time went spent in breweries doing apprenticeships or learning the trade.

MP: You went through a lot of training before you actually opened Summit. Why?

Stutrud: I talk about being a home brewer, I mean, that led to a direction of research, but there’s no basis of credentials for running a commercial brewery. It’s two different worlds.

I recognized that early on and I also knew that we would be competing directly with all of these big American and international brewers head on. I wanted to make damn sure that the quality of our beer was there. I mean, it’s one thing for a beer drinker to say, well, “I can’t drink this stuff. Who the hell’s going to drink this?” That’s one thing, taste reference. But for someone to say, particularly within the industry, that’s substandard, that’s not very good beer.

MP: Did you ever think twice about what you were doing?

Stutrud: There was late 1983 when things were getting very serious. I would sit by myself and I would think, “Well, if I do this, I sure as hell have to learn from the folks that I’ve met, and I have to be prepared to deal with the unexpected.” And to kind of sum it up into one thought, “Well, I’m going to go through more than I could ever anticipate.” At the same time, I really didn’t waver my commitment.

MP: Unlike when you were starting out, breweries are everywhere now. You paved the way – does that do anything for you?

Stutrud: The first mindset that I go to is from a very technical point of view. I really tear the beer apart. I keep my opinions to myself, but I really explore, just from a sensory point of view, the quality of beer and how whoever’s in charge of brewing, their level of technical expertise. So sometimes, and even with our own beer, I have a diagnostic mindset, which sometimes interrupts the pleasure of just enjoying a beer.

I like going to other places and scoping them out. But to be perfectly honest, a handful of years ago, there was a certain amount of fatigue that set in. I would be excruciatingly polite. Because of my reputation, I guess, a lot of people would seek out my opinion. And it’s really not my place to lay a judgment on what somebody is doing. They should know better themselves if it’s their profession.

But you can tell pretty quickly with some of these places when you walk in that, yeah, this guy’s a glorified home brewer. He has some concrete ideas of what he wants to create, and it’s a very creative artisanal process. But when it comes to shelf and flavor stability and doing deep analysis, they can’t control the lab or afford a lab, but they have to understand the foundations of quality, which has been lacking.

So that’s where I get critical of this evolution of craft beer. And I’ve had discussions with some well-known master brewers within the craft brew industry and they say, “Well, do you mean every doggone brew pub or taproom should have a sophisticated laboratory if they’re going to be being a part of this industry?”

And I go, well, not necessarily – unless they start to package beer outside their four walls. When they’re putting beer into cans or bottles or crowlers, then you’ve got to be very concerned about flavor and shelf stability because you’re going through the distribution and retail tiers.

Beer is extremely sensitive to dissolved oxygen and air. We measure it in parts per billion. And a part of the filling process in terms of packaging is that container gets evacuated. Just the ambient air inside is vacuum(ed) in a purging of CO2 is introduced twice before the beer even goes into the container. So, when you hold a jug up to a faucet and you just let her rip, and then you screw a cap on there and then send it off to somebody, or pre-fill it a week before somebody buys it, the beer isn’t in the best shape it should be.

MP: How big of a deal is it? It’s beer, it’s subjective. Does it matter?

Stutrud: My problem is I have really high expectations of someone if they consider themselves a master brewer. It’s truly my problem, and I understand that, and I own that. There are a lot of people out there that are just having fun in this business, and they’re able to share their brew with people who are enthusiastic about that.

MP: Will some of what you’re talking about self-correct? Especially now, with a saturated market and breweries going out of business, aren’t the highest quality going to survive?

Stutrud: According to the textbook? Yes. When you think of the tech bubble that happened several years ago. The issue is that people could figure out at a faster rate whether or not a software was faulty, or if we’re manufacturing shoes, if they hurt and didn’t fit. It’s something that was immediately recognizable. A beer, again, is so subjective.

People who are kicking out substandard beer, it’s not recognized by the consumer at the same rate as other products, whether or not it’s software, a car, shoes, or other types of food.

MP: You want to see the people that do the work correctly rewarded for their efforts?

 Stutrud: Yeah. And the people that are putting out substandard beers, they’re not even accountable for it. That’s the other thing that bugs me is that Mr. or Mrs. Liquor Store Owner are having cans that are rupturing or bomber bottles that are popping off on the shelf creating a mess, and then they’re the ones that pick up the mess. They call up the brewery and the brewers say, “Oh, geez, I’m really sorry.” And then somehow, they get this level of forgiveness.

 MP:  As you’re retiring, what are your thoughts – Summit’s thoughts –on the THC beverage industry?

Stutrud: We are really taking a deep dive on what needs to be done to produce a shelf stable product that’s consistent and we’re really exploring the technical and the science side of THC beverage production.

Then once we would establish an internal protocol of quality and the analysis, then we would pursue producing that type of a beverage. So, it’s a part of our DNA in that we won’t produce and release a beer unless it hits some very high standards. And at this point in time, that’s what the THC beverage industry needs is to have a high level of standards that are clearly communicated to the consumer, because there isn’t an agency out there that is telling anybody to do so.

I mean, we’re producing a food product. Beer is a food product. People ingest this, and when you’re making something that people put in their bodies, that’s a huge responsibility.

MP: So, you have some concerns with the quality control of the THC industry as it stands right now?

Stutrud: When you do it commercially, there’s a higher expectation than having some of Aunt Emma’s Magic Brownies over a holiday weekend. Now, today, Aunt Emma could be selling her magic brownies at a truck stop in Minnesota if she wanted to. You don’t need a license. You just need some nifty packaging – Aunt Emma, with all the psychedelic background that she’s surrounded by, and then maybe a clever phrase to entice people to buy that brownie.

So, that’s a crazy situation that we’re in today. And again, going back to brewing, that is (one) of the most difficult things to do when you’re brewing on a small scale and when they’re all batches, is to develop the expertise to make sure that that beer is consistent.

MP: So, even if the regulations and barriers to entry hadn’t required you to know your craft this way, you’d have studied it just as intensely?

Stutrud: Absolutely. Well, if I’m going to make something, I sure as heck should get educated on how to do it right, whatever it is I’m going to make, whether it’s a car, a shoe, tortillas.

I mean, that’s what craft is all about. And from the German origin of the word, it’s a livelihood. It’s what you do for a living. And I would hope that excelling at that livelihood is a central core of the experience.

MP: As you’re preparing to pass the baton – Chief Strategy Officer Brandon Bland will take the CEO role in March – how is Summit doing? Is the company where you wanted it to be?

Stutrud: Has Summit been successful in terms of developing, fostering a new industry? Absolutely. Do we excel at what we do when it comes to the style and quality and integrity of our products? Absolutely. Have we truly focused on human capital and fostering an absolute positive work, culture and workplace? Absolutely.

For every year that we’ve been in existence, have we been financially successful? Not necessarily. So, when you think about defining success, there are many, many layers.

When you are able to establish a certain level of quality, there’s always a deeper level to go to after that, and that’s a part of growth, and that’s a part of that responsibility to the consumer.

So, when you think about the fact that, A, we only did 1,500 barrels our first year, and it was all draft to where into the late 2000, 2010, 2015, 2016, of where we’re kicking out 2 million cases of beer a year. Isn’t that something? Those are a lot of units to sample. So, the more production that you’re kicking out, the more sampling and analysis that you’re also doing to ensure quality to the consumer.

So that’s what I mean where it just gets deeper as you grow along with all the investment that we’ve made in technology and production capability that you would see at a big brewer.

I mean, we embrace that, but at the same time, you’ve got all this hard capital. We pay attention to the human capital, even to the point of where my CFO at one time said, “You care more about people that profit,” which is fair enough. A lot worse things you could be accused of true enough.

Right now, we’re producing about 80,000 barrels a year. That’s down 10% from the previous year. We’re in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, North Dakota and South Dakota and 90% of our sales continue to be in Minnesota.

In 2017, 2018, I thought we would be hitting close to 200,000 barrels a year by this time and have deeper penetration and be a little more of a commercial threat to the bigger brewers, having a bit more market share to keep them on their toes. That was my aspiration.

The fact that it hasn’t come out that way as of today doesn’t mean it still can’t happen in a handful of years. Whether or not we diversify into THC or something like that, we’re running the analysis. There’s such a positive legacy that can continue to flow forward.

The spot’s objective was to sell a product. What ended up happening is it changed advertising, media, pop culture and society as a whole.

In 2013 the ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi came up with “Just Checking,” a 30-second spot touting the heart health benefits of the General Mills cereal brand, Cheerios. The premise was a young child, after conferring with her mother, adorably misunderstood how Cheerios was good for the heart and poured the cereal over her father sleeping in another room. Cute spot. Not too much dialogue, not a lot of action. But wow, did it get a lot attention.

It wasn’t the message or the product that was causing the stir. It was the fact that the mother in the ad was white and the father was Black. The little girl was biracial. And well, that was enough to spark such venomous outrage that General Mills disabled comments on the YouTube upload after just a couple of days. Not all the comments were negative — according to a statement at the time from General Mills the comments in support of the ad outnumbered the negative comments 10-to-1 — but the vitriol highlighted the racial strife of a country that had just reelected its first Black president who just so happened to be the product of an interracial relationship.

To the credit of General Mills and the Cheerios brand team, they didn’t shy away from the controversy, they doubled down. During the Super Bowl of 2014, Cheerios released a sequel to “Just Checking”: “Gracie.” They named the spot after the star of the campaign — Gracie (who now goes by Grace) Colbert.

And just like that everything changed.

The data isn’t fully available, but the anecdotal evidence is easy to see. More and more advertisers are casting multiethnic actors and interracial couple portrayals to sell their products. And American consumers are overwhelmingly supportive. According to Pew Research, both the rate and acceptance of interracial relationships are on the rise. In 2019 Pew found that 1 in 5 of all newlyweds were interracial.  And in 2021 a Gallup poll found that Americans’ acceptance of interracial relationships was at an all-time high of 94%. It is not irony that Gallup previously polled Americans on the question in June of 2013 – just a couple weeks after the “Just Checking” Cheerios ad ran.

While shows such as “Mixed-ish” and “Dear White People” are putting the subject interracial dating — particularly Black and white relationships — front and center, it wasn’t until nearly two years after the Cheerios ads ran that well-established “The Walking Dead” romantically intertwined the storyline of two of its main characters, Rick (who is white) and Michonne (who is Black). Unlike the aforementioned television shows, what also set the Cheerios ad apart is the casting of the father of Gracie as Black and the mother as white. While that is the more common of Black/white interracial relationships, media portrayals often do not accurately portray the predominant dynamic of Black/white interracial relationships. But it’s a far cry from where we were before the 2013 Cheerios ad.

And again, we wouldn’t be here if Colbert didn’t nail her audition.

It was that match that changed advertising and culture over the past 10 years.

While the Cheerios ad changed popular culture, that may not have been the intent.

“The commercial is cute. It’s about love, but I shy away from thinking about a commercial being about social change,” said David Todd Lawrence, associate professor of American Culture and Difference, Diversity Leadership and English at the University of St. Thomas. “Bottom line is they’re (General Mills) a company trying to sell something. But I recognize the importance of representation in media and on television. And the spot reinforces the normalcy of the world we live in.”

The shift in representation has as much to do with societal issues as it does with the Cheerios ads, according to Lawrence.

“I think it has as much to do with (the killing of) Trevon Martin, Ferguson (uprising) — all the way up to (the murder of) George Floyd,” Lawrence said. “I think a commercial like that hitting at the right time with all of the things happening in the world all kind of went hand-in-hand.”

And again, we’re not here without that great audition from a 6-year-old.

Colbert said it wasn’t until years later that she became aware of the controversy surrounding the ads.

“I was shocked when I was told about the backlash. For me it was so normal. I was used to seeing my white mother and Black father,” Colbert said. “Now, understanding racism, the backlash isn’t that strange.”

Yes, Cheerios was out to sell a product, but Martin realized the spots were more than boxes off the shelves. Martin described the groundbreaking ads as “probably one of the most rewarding moments in my advertising career.”

Reflectively, Colbert, after learning the spots weren’t written for a multiracial family, asked “what if?”

“Knowing they (General Mills and the ad team) changed the roles based on me makes me wonder how things would be if I didn’t get the role,” said Colbert. “It feels good that I was a part of change. I would say it’s an honor.”

Rep. Tom Emmer, R-6th District, called the regulations “heavy-handed, carrot-and-stick government intervention in the U.S. automobile industry and consumer markets to advance unproven technology” and “an egregious use of regulatory power.”

In a post on X, Emmer said the bill that would block Biden’s plan, sponsored by Michigan Republican Rep. Tim Walberg, “ensures that American new car buyers can continue to purchase the vehicle that fits their needs, instead of only vehicles that EPA allows.” 

Reps. Pete Stauber, R-8th District, Brad Finstad, R-1st District and Michelle Fischbach, R-7th District, all voted for the Choice in Automobile Retail Sales (CARS) Act, which was opposed by Minnesota’s Democratic lawmakers. Although it passed the U.S. House on a largely party line vote, the U.S. Senate isn’t likely to take it up and President Biden has promised to veto it if gets to his desk.

Opposing the promotion of electric vehicles could run counter to efforts by Stauber and others to establish nickel and copper mining in Minnesota, which they say is needed to provide batteries for EVs and other clean technology. 

For instance, during a recent congressional hearing, Stauber asked a U.S. Department of Transportation official if he preferred electric vehicles be made with minerals sourced in the United States, including his Iron Range-based district.

Kelsey Emmer, Stauber’s press secretary, said the congressman’s stance “is not at all contradictory.”

“Congressman Stauber supported the CARS Act because he believes in consumer choice and wants to block the Biden administration from putting forward electric vehicle mandates that dictate what type of car a family can drive,” she said in an emailed statement. “A large portion of his constituents are blue-collar, working-class people who simply do not want an overpriced and heavily subsidized vehicle that is extremely unreliable in cold climates.”

Kelsey Emmer also said “Stauber has no problem with those who freely choose to buy an EV for themselves, but consumers should have a choice.”

She also said Stauber believes it’s “hypocritical” for the Biden administration to pressure Americans “to buy this so-called clean energy technology” when much of the critical minerals used to make EVs are sourced in China and the Democratic Republic of Congo, where there are instances of child labor.

“I’m sure most Americans who freely choose to purchase an EV would prefer to see these minerals responsibly and ethically sourced, and we can do just that in northern Minnesota,” Kelsey Emmer said.

A threat to freedom?

The EPA’s tailpipe regulations would phase in through vehicle model years 2027 through 2032. The agency plans to finalize the regulations in March 2024 and says that through 2055, the proposed standards would avoid nearly 10 billion tons of CO2 emissions, which is equal to more than twice the U.S.’s annual CO2 emissions as of 2022.

But there’s plenty of pushback — and not just from Republican members of Congress. 

The EPA has received thousands of public comments opposing and supporting the tailpipe emission plan.

The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, a trade group representing major automakers, has urged the Biden administration to make significant changes.

In its public comment to the EPA, the group said it supports efforts to reduce the emissions of internal combustion engines that would continue to be produced during the transition to EVs. But the group also said the timeframe for the new tailpipe emission standards are “neither reasonable nor achievable.”

“(The Alliance) does not believe they can be met without substantially increasing the cost of vehicles, reducing consumer choice, and disadvantaging major portions of the United States population,” the group said.

The Alliance also questioned whether enough people could afford EVs, whether there would be the charging infrastructure in place that could handle the sharp increase in electric vehicles, whether automakers could obtain enough critical minerals for the increased number of batteries needed to power EVs and whether customers would embrace the technology on such a large scale in such a short time.

Predictably, the nation’s petroleum industry also took issue with the new regulations. The American Petroleum Institute said they “threaten freedom,” because to meet the new standards, 67% of new cars and 40% of medium-duty pickups and vans would have to be electric by 2032. Like the Alliance, API said EVs would be priced beyond what many Americans could afford. 

The Departments of Transportation in Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming proffered a different argument: The rush to electric vehicles would deplete the federal Highway Trust Fund, which is funded largely through taxes on gasoline and pays for most of the federal share of transportation projects.

“A major erosion of revenue into the Highway Trust Fund (HTF) would result from such drastic changes, as the new EVs encouraged by the proposed rule would generate wear and tear on the highways without paying fuel taxes into the HTF. This would place significant downward pressure on highway and bridge investment, which already faces an investment backlog of $786 billion,” the states said in their public comments.

Minnesota’s Department of Transportation did not weigh in on the new regulations.

But the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency did.

“We see the proposed rulemaking as an opportunity to advance climate action, reduce harm to Minnesotans from criteria pollutants and air toxics, and accelerate the transition to electric vehicles in our state,” the agency told the EPA in a comment.

The nation’s environmental groups also praised the Biden administration plan, with several groups urging members to flood the EPA with letters of support.

“For far too long, vehicle pollution has been devastating for the health of communities across the country and the climate,” said the Union of Concerned Scientists.

It’s hard to say what final regulations will look like, and whether they will ever be implemented, especially if Biden doesn’t win reelection. Another unknown is how those regulations would affect Minnesota, a state that has fewer EV drivers than many others and with winter temperatures that affect an EV’s efficiency.  

According to the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission, there were just over 34,000 EVs registered in the state in January of this year, which is less than 1% of registered vehicles in Minnesota.

Still, Minnesota is not at the bottom of the list when it comes to EVs on the road. According to J.D. Power, the 10 states with the lowest levels of EV adoption — and there’s indication their popularity is falling — are Michigan, Iowa, Kansas, Arkansas, Mississippi, Wyoming, Louisiana, South Dakota, West Virginia and North Dakota.

Faced with a startlingly high cancer rate in the key U.S. farm state of Iowa, public health leaders are taking the politically precarious step of acknowledging that preventing disease necessitates cutting exposure to potentially cancer-causing chemicals, including those used in agriculture.

In a departure from other state cancer prevention programs, which rarely address environmental risk factors for cancer other than radon, a known cause of lung cancer, Iowa is working to better understand and make the case for limiting exposure to pesticides, commercial fertilizer, and animal manure used and generated by Iowa agriculture, among other environmental contaminants.

“These broader array of environmental risk factors are absolutely there for cancer. But they’re not paid attention to in state cancer control plans,” said Molly Jacobs, an epidemiologist at the University of Massachusetts, who is working with Iowa health authorities. “It’s quite unique that Iowa has addressed this as a priority in their plan. I applaud Iowa for taking on this task of thinking much broader and bigger, and changing this paradigm.”

The work to address environmental factors to reduce cancer cases began earlier this year and is being undertaken by the Iowa Cancer Consortium. It’s a 21-year-old, 650-member coalition of public health professionals, researchers, and health providers focused on controlling cancer. The consortium is led by Mary Charlton, an epidemiologist at the University of Iowa College of Public Health who also is research director of the Iowa Cancer Registry, which collects cancer data on Iowa citizens.

The consortium has launched an Environmental Task Force and a five-year plan for cutting public exposure to “environmental carcinogens.”

Farmers, agricultural executives, and state lawmakers have spent decades resisting any changes in farm practices that reduce the use of chemicals and nutrients, saying the inputs are needed to ensure ample food production.

But public health advocates say evidence tying the farm pollutants to disease is too strong to deny.

“We can’t sit back and say, ‘Wow. Somebody may not like this,’” said Kamyar Enshayan, director of the Center for Energy and Environmental Education at the University of Northern Iowa. “Knowing what we do know, it’s just prudent that we support practices and systems that require significantly less fertilizer and pesticides.”

Research shows that Iowa agriculture can remain productive even when cutting synthetic fertilizer and pesticide use, Enshayan said.

Cancer rates on rise

Iowa now ranks second to Kentucky in cancer incidence in the United States, and from 2015 to 2019 was the only state where the rate of new cancers increased, according to the National Cancer Institute. Rates of oral cancer, leukemia, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, melanoma, kidney, colon, and breast cancer are among the nation’s highest, according to Charlton.

The state is expected to see 21,000 new cases of cancer this year alone, more than double the number of new cancers recorded for 1973, the year Iowa began keeping records, according to Charlton. Since 1973, the state population has grown only a little over 10%.

“Some cancers in Iowa are rising and others are not falling as quickly as they are in other states,” said Charlton. “We do know that Iowans have a number of environmental exposures that could contribute to our risk of cancer.”

Exposure to nitrate in drinking water is well-recognized by scientists as a risk factor in many of the same high-incidence cancers seen in Iowa – lymphoma, breast cancer, blood, and colon cancer.

Cancer researchers, including a group from the University of Iowa, have linked various cancers to long-term exposure in air and water to trace levels of insecticides and herbicides, as well as nitrates. And Iowa farmers annually spread more pesticides (nearly 54 million pounds) more commercial fertilizer (2 billion pounds) and more animal manure (50 million tons) than in any other state, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Iowa State University.

These farm pollutants heavily contaminate surface and groundwater across Iowa, according to state monitoring data, potentially exposing even people who don’t live and work on farms.

Links between farm contaminants and disease have long been studied. In 2001, researchers at the University of Iowa evaluated data from a long-term study of more than 20,000 women in Iowa and found increased risks of bladder and ovarian cancers associated with elevated nitrate levels in public drinking water supplies used by the women.

A 2018 peer-reviewed paper by National Cancer Institute researchers and other scientists evaluated 30 epidemiology studies of low-level exposure to nitrates in public drinking water systems, finding that many studies “observed increased risk with ingestion of water nitrate levels that were below regulatory limits.”

‘It touches everybody’

Since 1973 the total number of Iowa farms has declined but the remaining farms have expanded in size and productivity. Iowa acres planted with corn grew roughly 30% from 10.5 million to 14 million, according to the USDA. And thanks in part to heavy fertilizer use, corn yields on average have doubled from under 100 bushels to 200 bushels per acre.

In 1973 Iowa corn farmers used an average of 109 pounds of fertilizer per acre. By 2018 they were using 139 pounds per acre, according to the most recent USDA data.

Crop researchers have known for decades that as much as 70% of the nitrogen in fertilizer and manure is not taken up by crops and drains into ground and surface water as nitrate.

Participants in the Iowa Cancer Consortium note that many factors can play a role in development of disease, including genetics. But scientists are increasingly studying how exposures to pesticides and other environmental toxins impact health. In 2010, the Obama administration’s President’s Cancer Panel produced a thorough study on reducing environmental cancer risk that specifically identified insecticides, herbicides, and nitrates as “contaminants from agricultural sources” that merit attention as potential causes of cancer.

Enshayan and other consortium participants acknowledge that targeting agricultural practices as a public health threat in Iowa is politically risky.

This year alone a prominent researcher who was critical of nutrient pollution was forced out of his post at the University of Iowa. The state Legislature decided not to fund Iowa’s state-of-the-art system for monitoring nitrate levels in streams. A plan by the state Department of Natural Resources to protect groundwater by requiring better construction and oversight of manure storage lagoons at large livestock operations was dropped in November.

The cancer consortium’s work, which is likely to take years, is significant, both for the state, and for the nation. Of the states with the highest cancer incidence, four others in the Corn Belt rank in the top 15, according to the CDC.

“The really important thing to consider is cancer is nonpartisan and nonpolitical,” said Kelly Wells Sittig, executive director of the consortium. “It touches everybody.”