Cookie Cart produces more than just delicious snickerdoodle, chocolate chip and hand-decorated cookies.

The Minneapolis-based nonprofit also claims to “bake bright futures” by training low-income teenagers in every aspect of the business, from marketing to distribution, on top of soft skills such as business etiquette and résumé-building.

The job-training company, which is expanding to St. Paul’s Payne Avenue in April, now faces a double whammy. Minneapolis has mandated annual increases to its citywide minimum wage, and St. Paul officials are contemplating a similar move.

For a small shop that spends at least as much time mentoring vulnerable students as producing a marketable product, nonprofit advocates say the numbers don’t add up.

“Every $1 that that minimum wage goes up, that’s another $30,000 we have to make up in fundraising or in cookie sales,” said Cookie Cart executive director Matt Halley, who oversees more than 200 teens at the North Minneapolis production facility. “As an organization, we’re really supportive of the living wage, so this puts us in an awkward and an uncomfortable position.”

His concerns are being echoed by others in the “earn to learn” youth-enrichment community.

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With some reluctance, nonprofit leaders plan to ask that their young trainees be exempt from increasing minimum wage rules, such as the $15 hourly minimum that has already been approved and is gradually being rolled out in Minneapolis, as well as those under discussion in St. Paul.

They’ll face opposition from advocates they sometimes count as allies.

“We do not support any exemptions for any workers based on age,” said Celeste Robinson, co-director of $15 NOW! Minnesota, in a written statement to the Pioneer Press. “A carve-out for young workers would undermine the minimum wage policy. Contrary to the myth that minimum wage workers are high schoolers working for extra pocket money, many young workers are supporting themselves, paying for school or supporting families.”

MUCH DISCUSSION AHEAD

Through the St. Paul Foundation, the city of St. Paul has asked the nonpartisan Citizens League to study the impact of a potential minimum wage increase on employers, workers and the tax base as well as nonprofits.

An early draft of the league’s formal report, which was due to the St. Paul Foundation on Friday, will be presented to the council Feb. 21.

St. Paul isn’t as far along in minimum wage discussions as Minneapolis, but in the last election season, increasing the city’s hourly minimum wage to $15 without exceptions, or “carve outs,” became a cornerstone of St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter’s successful campaign for office.

Nevertheless, nonprofits, schools, government buildings and other non-taxable properties make up anywhere from about one-fourth to one-third of St. Paul, and a large portion of the city’s employment base. City officials say they’re likely to take more time to listen to the concerns of nonprofits than Minneapolis did.

“The foundations that oftentimes fund these youth-oriented nonprofits are engaged in a more meaningful way than I think they were in Minneapolis,” said St. Paul City Council President Amy Brendmoen.

For nonprofits, reaching out to foundations seems an unlikely way to cover increased labor costs. About two-thirds of Cookie Cart’s budget already comes from gifts and grants as opposed to cookie sales.

“The foundation community has been withdrawing support from youth training for the last few years,” said Peg Thomas, executive director of the St. Paul-based Sundance Family Foundation, which helps fund Cookie Cart, Urban Boat Builders, Urban Roots and roughly 35 other youth-focused nonprofits like them annually.

“The youth we’re trying to serve in low-income communities of color will be disproportionately affected by this new wage law, which is supposed to help them,” Thomas said. “It would mean having to make changes such as cutting the number of teens hired, cutting the amount of hours worked … or shifting its focus from ‘baking futures’ to bakery sales.”

Some nonprofit leaders say their concerns extend beyond charitable training programs to youth employment in the traditional market, where the state Department of Employment and Economic Development reports roughly one in 10 young people who are looking for work are unable to find it.

In late January, some 40 nonprofit leaders met with Pahoua Yang Hoffman, executive director of the Citizens League, at the Wilder Foundation’s St. Paul offices to discuss their objections.

“If I am an employer, what’s my incentive to hire a 15- or 16-year-old if I can get a 21- or 22-year-old for the same price?” said Halley at the time. “I don’t think we have begun to think about what is already a limited availability of jobs for young people if there isn’t any incentive to hire them and give them a chance.”

Bonnie Alton, who runs Great Harvest Bread Co. on St. Paul’s Selby Avenue, employs 18 workers, and half of them are neighborhood teens.

Those youth workers — most of whom work one late-afternoon and one Saturday shift per week — are paid between $9 and $11 per hour.

As much as Alton loves coaching young people around dough, she’s crunching the numbers and figuring out what it would cost to replace several teens with a single full-time adult worker, which she feels she may have to do if the minimum wage goes up.

“How it would impact youth workers, for me, is that I wouldn’t hire them anymore,” Alton said. “To put employers like me in a position where we don’t have the privilege of training young people is going to hurt them.”

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Manthe has been working since she was 16 years old, and getting paid more would have helped her make rent and pay her way through school.

She recalls leaving an underpaid retail job she felt little attachment to for a higher-paying job that motivated her to do her best for the company. As a manager, she wants the young workers she supervises to feel invested, not disposable.

“I don’t think there should be any kind of exemption for youth workers, or anyone of any age,” Manthe said. “The administration of it all would be an unnecessary nightmare.”

In her statement, Robinson of $15 NOW! Minnesota said programs like the city’s Right Track internships are designed to help low-income young people, many of them immigrants and people of color.

Robinson said lower wages would fail to do that: “A $15 minimum wage for all workers, regardless of age, is an indispensable part of the solution to St. Paul’s twin crises of poverty and racial disparity.”

RAMPING UP

The gradual minimum wage increase that began taking effect in Minneapolis on Jan. 1 includes a youth training wage, but nonprofit officials say it’s too restrictive to be effective.

Minneapolis employers participating in a city-approved training or apprenticeship program may pay youth workers who are under 20 years old a training rate that is 85 percent of the citywide minimum wage, and even that partial exemption expires after 90 calendar days.

The youth wage is “one (topic) I’m hearing that maybe wasn’t that thoroughly discussed or thought through in Minneapolis,” said outgoing St. Paul City Council member Russ Stark.

Advocates point out, however, that Minneapolis’ 90-day carve-out means a young person could work every summer from age 16 until 20 — from the summer after 10th grade until their junior year of college — and still never have made minimum wage.

Halley and directors of several other youth-oriented nonprofits met at Cookie Cart’s North Minneapolis offices recently to review possible policy recommendations. They plan to contact Minneapolis and St. Paul council members with their concerns.

They say their youth aren’t really workers, at least not half the time. The teens are offered money to learn.

And depending upon the program, some young people stick around for years — far beyond the 90-day training period described in the Minneapolis ordinance.

“The fact that they get paid to participate is what draws them in the door,” said Halley, who offers teens $9.50 an hour to start, with a possible increase to $10.50 per hour. “Youth employment that includes training is an on-ramp to traditional employment.”

For programs like Cookie Cart, only about 40 percent of youth hours are spent making cookies. “The rest of the time, they’re engaged in community activities,” Thomas said. “They’re going on field trips, they’re taking a (college-entrance) certificate course, they’re finishing their résumés, they’re positioning themselves to be leaders in the community and workforce-ready.” Related Articles St. Paul rec center hours, aquatics, ice rinks face budget hit

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Tree Trust, a St. Louis Park-based nonprofit that provides paid training for young people to work on nature trails and other environmental settings throughout the metro area, has expressed concern about the record-keeping and fairness involved in paying teens different rates to work in different cities.

“While we are very supportive of an increase to the minimum wage, there are unintended consequences that this was not intended for a 14- or 15-year-old,” said Kim Lawler, a Tree Trust spokeswoman, during the Jan. 25 meeting with the Citizens League.