The Proper Pie Co.
Raising $15,000 for a new venture can be easy as pie.
A Church Hill bakery startup recently surpassed its goal of raising $15,000 from a crowd-funding website.
The Proper Pie Company, which is under construction at 2505 E. Broad St., raised $15,571 from more than 300 backers on Kickstarter.com, a website that lets groups raise capital through individual donations in exchange for a free meal here or a T-shirt there.
Nikki Price, who is starting the business with her husband Neil Smith, said she was going to use the money to get the restaurant “started on the right foot.”
“We’re going to buy a couple of pieces of equipment we need, and we are going to pay some people who have helped us out getting things going,”
Nikki Price and Neil Smith (Photos by Burl Rolett)
Smith, a New Zealand native, wanted to start a restaurant where you could find the kind of savory pies so readily available in his homeland. You can read more about the concept in an RBS story here.
Proper Pie got a cash grant of $10,000 from Bon Secours last year.
Price said the restaurant wouldn’t quite hit its planned Oct. 1 opening.
“We’ll probably do a soft opening here in the next little bit, but there are some more things we need to work out first,” she said.
Great to see a local fundraising success story in the emerging area of crowdfunding. For those interested in supporting local business development, this can be a cheap and efficient way to support business growth and develpopment of the arts (many crowdfunding requests relate to creative arts projects) in your community. Congress is trying to make crowdfunding even more flexible and useful through various provisions of the JOBS Act.
Yes, check out Fundable.com. Started by a friend of mine from college, if the JOBS Act goes into affect, the exchange of investment capital will be ownership shares.
Basically venture capital for small businesses and enables non-accredited investors to invest in their communities.
Bring on the pies! Church Hill is looking forward to the opening!
Local fundraising is great, but if an emerging company needs more, say for advertising, what are they to do? Even those already funded by a VC can have that money gone in a flash for R&D and other necessities. However, an emerging company can still get advertising and other services by using Services4Stock.com. This service pairs these emerging companies with service providers, many of them advertisers, that will take equity instead of cash. It’s a win-win for both parties.
Loved putting up money on Kickstarter for a ProperPie. Looking forward to my first pie.