Tea Shop Things
Things are moving forward-ish with that, so I'm looking for some input on the best way to set up donations and such.
My friend and I met with a woman in the downtown area who owns several buildings that they're renovating for shop fronts and restaurants. She is very excited about our idea to have a small cafe/bakery/tea shop, as have been the Small Business Advisers that we talked to and my late father-in-law's financial adviser. We would have a shop on the Main Street in a down town area where there is a population of 15 thousand, and 300'000 visitors. There's a yearly boat show in the area and a "Taste of" festival, and art shows, and during the week there are a TON of commuters going through given the judicial center is there and the court house and all of this.
So, it's looking very promising. The building won't be fully renovated for at least six months, but I figure that gives us some time to lock down funding. I imagine that we're going to have to sort out some loans but I'm hoping that we can get some money from the crowd funding route. The less we have to loan the better.
While they're renovating the building, replacing the roof, painting the exterior, putting in new walls, redoing the electric and the plumbing we'd need to get funds in order to supply any kitchen equipment that we need, pots, pans, plates, cups, refrigerated displays, do the floors and the internal painting all the rest of it. We do have some "nest egg" but half of that covers the deposit, three months rent and utilities, so the remainder is not nearly enough to cover the supplies even with friends donating their services to tile, paint and make the sign template.
So, I'm trying to sort out what the best way to approach the donation markers are with regards indiegogo.
Baked goods might be difficult to ship out as gifts. We're trying to make things as naturally and organically as possible and promote wellness so as little chemically processed stuff as possible; I'm still figuring that other than maybe cookies things would be hard to ship. (We're planning on also offering scones, biscuits, croissants, cornish pasties, cupcakes, tarts etc.)
Tea is a little easier to hand out, put in the little packets send it out with tea-bags. Given we want to get mismatched chairs and tables and will be repainting and refinishing a lot of that we'd wondered about saying we'd paint people's names, or family friendly design requests as thank yous onto the chairs and tables but I'm not sure how that would go over.
Brain storming other things we could send out tea balls or mugs and pots, I suppose. We'll be offering other services on an appointment basis, such as hypnotherapy and tarot readings -- but some of that is less easy to do via mail order.
We're going to have a little gift section in the store to go along with some tea gift baskets that we intend to have which will likely have some wood-burned jewelry and boxes, hand made candles, smudging supplies, crystals, runes and some things like that.
My friend and I met with a woman in the downtown area who owns several buildings that they're renovating for shop fronts and restaurants. She is very excited about our idea to have a small cafe/bakery/tea shop, as have been the Small Business Advisers that we talked to and my late father-in-law's financial adviser. We would have a shop on the Main Street in a down town area where there is a population of 15 thousand, and 300'000 visitors. There's a yearly boat show in the area and a "Taste of" festival, and art shows, and during the week there are a TON of commuters going through given the judicial center is there and the court house and all of this.
So, it's looking very promising. The building won't be fully renovated for at least six months, but I figure that gives us some time to lock down funding. I imagine that we're going to have to sort out some loans but I'm hoping that we can get some money from the crowd funding route. The less we have to loan the better.
While they're renovating the building, replacing the roof, painting the exterior, putting in new walls, redoing the electric and the plumbing we'd need to get funds in order to supply any kitchen equipment that we need, pots, pans, plates, cups, refrigerated displays, do the floors and the internal painting all the rest of it. We do have some "nest egg" but half of that covers the deposit, three months rent and utilities, so the remainder is not nearly enough to cover the supplies even with friends donating their services to tile, paint and make the sign template.
So, I'm trying to sort out what the best way to approach the donation markers are with regards indiegogo.
Baked goods might be difficult to ship out as gifts. We're trying to make things as naturally and organically as possible and promote wellness so as little chemically processed stuff as possible; I'm still figuring that other than maybe cookies things would be hard to ship. (We're planning on also offering scones, biscuits, croissants, cornish pasties, cupcakes, tarts etc.)
Tea is a little easier to hand out, put in the little packets send it out with tea-bags. Given we want to get mismatched chairs and tables and will be repainting and refinishing a lot of that we'd wondered about saying we'd paint people's names, or family friendly design requests as thank yous onto the chairs and tables but I'm not sure how that would go over.
Brain storming other things we could send out tea balls or mugs and pots, I suppose. We'll be offering other services on an appointment basis, such as hypnotherapy and tarot readings -- but some of that is less easy to do via mail order.
We're going to have a little gift section in the store to go along with some tea gift baskets that we intend to have which will likely have some wood-burned jewelry and boxes, hand made candles, smudging supplies, crystals, runes and some things like that.