Network of entrepreneurs and creatives sustains local businesses in Grand Marais

CATHY WURZER: We have a Duluth North Shore vibe going on the show right now. We're going to talk a bit more about Grand Marais. Show of hands, those who love Grand Marais? Well, of course. It's a great place. It's the gateway to the Gunflint Trail right on, of course, the big shores of the big lake, Lake Superior. And like other small towns in Minnesota, it's dependent on seasonal tourists.

Grand Marais went through a rough patch with the pandemic. No doubt about it. Other towns did, too. And then there was this fire, this big fire, that destroyed three well-known downtown businesses in 2020, and another familiar business in Grand Marais burned down in 2023. MPR Senior Economics Contributor Chris Farrell recently spent time with several small business owners in Grand Marais. He joins us to talk about what he learned. Hey, Chris.

CHRIS FARRELL: Good to be here.

CATHY WURZER: I am very glad you spent time on the shore of Grand Marais specifically.

CHRIS FARRELL: Well, my original idea, Cathy-- I was going to do the interviews, and then I was going to go snowshoeing. Well, there wasn't enough snow, so that plan didn't pan out, but I did manage to get some beautiful long walks by Lake Superior and then one particular hike off the Gunflint Trail.

CATHY WURZER: Oh, very nice. OK. Let's talk about the businesses you visited. By the way, you always have a major theme when you go out and about from your conversations. What was it?

CHRIS FARRELL: So here's what I'd picked up. There's something of a generational transfer going on among the small business owners in Grand Marais. Younger entrepreneurs are taking over existing businesses or starting their own business from scratch. And one of those creative entrepreneurs is Nan Onkka.

NAN ONKKA: So I'm in my 30s. There are so many new businesses. There are so many people just really following a passion, whether it's art or making of some sort or a business idea. And when you walk around downtown, many of the businesses are owned or managed by people my age, and it's really exciting to see.

CATHY WURZER: Oh, it is. There's a new place-- I've not stayed there-- the Mayhew Inn in Grand Marais, and they were in a space damaged by the fires. So it looks like it's going to be a large retail lodging and event center. Is that right?

CHRIS FARRELL: That's right. It'll be right where the fires happened, so that's going to happen there. And then you've got a number of new businesses. I was wandering around Upstate Minnesota Gift Shop and Superior Creamery. And I want to get back to Nan in a little bit and her business. But first, Cathy, I want to turn to Hana Crosby of Crosby Bakery.

CATHY WURZER: Very glad you're doing that. I love bakeries.

CHRIS FARRELL: Everybody loves a bakery, right? So picture this. You're walking up the hill from the waterside in Grand Marais, and you eventually come upon a former white church. And the building is owned by the famed North Shore artist Betsy Bowen.

And her studio is on the ground floor, and there's this side entrance in the Crosby Bakery. Now, here's the thing, Cathy. It is incredibly small. And she has two ovens, but she can only use one at a time because otherwise, she would knock out the power in the building. So she bakes in this tight space.

HANA CROSBY: Cookies are the most popular thing that I sell right now. I make giant cookies. They're a quarter of an ounce, and they're sold at Java Moose Co-op, and I have a lot of varieties. But my staple ones are called the Harbor Cookie, which is a peanut butter, oatmeal, chocolate chip, and then a Trail Cookie, which is a gluten-free, dairy-free, cranberry almond cookie. But carrot cake is also what I'm known for, and bread-- lots of bread.

CATHY WURZER: Good. I'm glad to hear that. That goes right along with the World's Best Donuts shop in Grand Marais, so you can really fill up. I like that.

CHRIS FARRELL: Yes. Unfortunately, the donut shop was closed.

CATHY WURZER: Ah. So tell me. This is a whole new thing for me, Crosby Bakery. Tell me a little bit more about the owner.

CHRIS FARRELL: So she was born, raised in Grand Marais, left for a few years for northern California and Washington State, and then returned. And she and her husband, Cathy-- they're now building a retail bakery. There's a vacant lot in the heart of downtown. It's right next to Blue Water Cafe.

And the bakery-- the plan is it will seat 45 people. They'll have an espresso machine. They'll offer pastries, cookies, bread, and more. And they hope to open by June 1. By the way, did I mention she has two young children and that her husband is also an entrepreneur?

And as you can imagine, it hasn't been an easy path to open a new bakery, especially with all the COVID-related shortages. I mean, owning and running a small business is hard. And while we were talking, I just couldn't help but ask. Do you ever sleep?

HANA CROSBY: I do sleep, yes. So that has been one of the things-- very early on, my husband and I, we will not lose sleep over this project. I mean, it comes home with us. But anything that you can lose sleep over something, it's not going to help you, and so that is really our mindset when things get thrown at us-- which they have through construction.

Construction, especially since COVID, has just gone haywire. Things get delayed. As things go down the road and we're opening and I have too many weddings and not enough employees, you just take it hour by hour, day by day. Go to sleep. Get a good night of sleep so you can face whatever the next day brings.

CATHY WURZER: I wish I had that attitude. Tell me about the new expansion.

CHRIS FARRELL: So it's been financed by an economic injury disaster loan and a grant. They got a personal business loan, got some savings, and she currently has two part time employees. She'll need six full time, year round people. And in the busy summer months, she'll probably want to add two or three workers.

CATHY WURZER: Oh my gosh. But there's a big worker shortage on the shore.

CHRIS FARRELL: There are. I mean, workers are really scarce. But at the same time, she says, look. The community is really supportive. And other small businesses? They're cheering her on.

HANA CROSBY: From what I've found so far, the businesses have been very supportive. Downtown has looked very gloomy for a while. We lost three buildings from a fire, the vacant lot that we're building on, so I think most people are ready to see Grand Marais kind of come back to life.

[BEEPING]

There it is. This is cranberry wild rice bread, and it is hot.

CATHY WURZER: Oh my god. I love cranberry wild rice bread. OK. Tell us about Nan Onkka and her art business.

CHRIS FARRELL: OK. So she and her husband, they moved to Grand Marais several years ago, and they have two young children, and her studio is at her house, which is on the outskirts of town. And she specializes in woodcut printmaking, and one wall of her studio is lined with prints. So while I was there, I picked one out. It had cross-country ski tracks running through the snow, and I asked her to describe her process. It started when she snapped a photo on the nearby Pincushion Trail.

NAN ONKKA: And then I start developing sketches from that. The sketches I usually do digitally so that I can play with the layers of color. And then once I kind of have a good idea of how to build the image, then I transfer it to a wood cut or a wood block to make a woodcut print.

So all of my prints are woodcuts. They're reductive, which means that I print the lightest color, and then I carve some away, and then I print the next color, and then I carve some away, and then I print the next color. And I do that four or five times, and so I'm building up these colors one by one.

CATHY WURZER: Cool. How does she sell her woodcut prints?

CHRIS FARRELL: So the biggest part of her business is greeting cards, and she has about 40 different greeting card designs. And she sells them both locally and nationally. She's in about 100 shops nationwide. So I was curious. How do you build up a business like that working from-- it's a remote Minnesota town of, what? Some 1,300?

NAN ONKKA: I started by just reaching out locally. A lot of my work is inspired by the North Woods, so the Boundary Waters, Lake Superior, just walks around where we live here in Grand Marais, so a lot of natural scenery. And I started by just reaching out to local businesses, to outfitters, to hotels, things like that.

And from there, I kind of got into Duluth and Minneapolis, St. Paul. And then through growing that online, I use the platform Faire, which is for wholesale retailers. Kind of unexpectedly, but now it makes sense-- now, I have a lot of shops in Maine and Vermont and New Hampshire, Alaska, Oregon, just places that really resonate with this northern scenery.

CATHY WURZER: It's cool that Nan does woodblock carving-- so does Betsy Bowen, obviously-- and in a place that's long been known as a town that supports and inspires artists. It's a great place for artists, so it's really great that she can sell nationally.

CHRIS FARRELL: Yes. And one of the things she said, Cathy, I really wanted to highlight because it resonated with my conversation with Hana Crosby, the baker. Both of them-- just off of what you're saying. Both of them said there is just community support for creative entrepreneurs to tap into.

NAN ONKKA: Oh, there's a huge artistic community. That has been one of the greatest gifts. Personally, most of my friends are in the creative field here and the entrepreneur field. And so yesterday, we have a group of women that gather every couple of weeks just to connect as solopreneurs and creatives, and we call it Website Wednesday.

And I hosted yesterday, and everybody came over, and we had snacks and tea. And we're all just working on our websites technically, but just kind of pin pinballing different topics. How do you do this? Oh, I'm writing a contract. What would you say? Oh, does anyone have this issue on their website? And so it's just this really beautiful community of people.

CATHY WURZER: Oh, I love that. Website Wednesday. And I like how they're helping each other.

CHRIS FARRELL: Well, here's the thing, Cathy. I find this sharing of information and knowledge upon entrepreneurs, including those in creative endeavors-- it's really inspiring, and it's also an underappreciated part of the whole entrepreneurial ecosystem in the state.

CATHY WURZER: Yeah. Chris Farrell, thank you.

CHRIS FARRELL: Thank you.

CATHY WURZER: This is the first of two reports that Chris will make on small businesses in Grand Marais.