Soon, you can have your cake and eat it, too.
Well, not cake per se, but buttery croissants and mouth-watering croissant-pretzels and bear claws and bagels and, well, whatever else All Crumbs Artisan Bakery dares to tempt carb-loving customers with.
The year-old bakery launched an online crowdfunding campaign Wednesday, aiming to raise $10,000. Co-owners Dan Muszynski and Gabe LeMay hope that will be enough to build out the front of their new Adams Street retail space.
“It was a tough decision. We thought about it for a long time,” Mr. Muszynski said of seeking funds for the established business, which now peddles to loyalists at the weekly Toledo Farmers’ Market in the Warehouse District and does some wholesale to local restaurants.
Mr. Muszynski and Mr. LeMay are among a growing population of local entrepreneurs turning to the people of the Internet for financial backing.
The collective donations of locals — and even a few folks beyond northwest Ohio — have helped launch the following businesses:
■ Kengo Sushi and Yakitori, a new sushi restaurant in the Warehouse District
■ Actual Coffee, a Rossford-based roaster
■ Flatlands Coffee, an in-the-works coffee shop in Bowling Green
■ Black Cloister Brewing Co., a downtown Toledo brewery opening March 20
■ Bleak House, an Adams Street coffee shop
■ Fowl and Fodder, a Sylvania Township sandwich eatery.
“It’s here to stay,” said Sonny Ariss, chairman of the management department at the University of Toledo’s college of business and innovation. “I hope to see more crowdsourcing or crowdfunding in northwest Ohio to help the economy.”
The concept of crowdfunding is simple.
People who dream of building or expanding a business — or hosting an event, starting a project, raising money for a charity, seeking capital for their hamster’s surgery — create an online campaign for a specified amount of money.
Successful campaigns typically have a clean, graphically appealing page with a compelling narrative, hosted through the platform of their choice: Kickstarter, Indie GoGo, and Go Fund Me are among the most popular.
They tell potential backers what the money is to be used for, what risks are involved, and what those who contribute will receive in return, the “perks.”
For businesses, the contribution is most often a prepayment on goods or services. On some funding platforms, the hosting site will only disburse funds to the fund-raiser if the campaign’s goal is met, while other platforms are less rigid. Each host takes a portion of the contributions as payment.
When Ben Vollmar started his Kickstarter campaign for Flatlands Coffee last year, he considered for a long time the perks he would offer backers.
He and his wife, Cassy, asked for $20,000 for various expenditures needed to open the coffee shop.
For those willing to contribute $10, they would receive a hand-written thank you and one free drink. At the higher end of the contribution scale, for $700, a backer could have unlimited free drinks for a year and a T-shirt. The perk had to match the contribution level, Mr. Vollmar said.
“People don’t want to give and then not get something worth what they’re getting,” he said. “We priced things out and tried to add value so we would encourage people to make a pledge rather than feel like they’re doing a charity and donating money.”
The campaign, which ended in June, raised $21,029, given by 286 backers.
Flatlands is expected to open in April.
Many of the businesses that use crowdfunding are looking to get started, which is why Mr. Muszynski and Mr. LeMay struggled with the idea of asking people for money when the bakery was already operational.
To settle their nerves, the duo spent a lot of time thinking about how their campaign could give back to Toledo and to the community that has supported them since Day One.
From the reflection came a partnership with the nonprofit Food For Thought, a mobile food pantry that, in part, feeds about 350 people downtown on Saturdays. For every dollar raised through the Indiegogo campaign, igg.me/at/allcrumbs, All Crumbs will match that in bread donations to Food For Thought.
If the bakery's $10,000 goal is met by March 11, it will donate what amounts to 2,000 loaves of bread a year for every year that the company exists.
That’s on top of the individual perks that donors get once the campaign ends. Give $20 to All Crumbs, get a $25 gift certificate and feel good about All Crumbs donating four loaves of bread.
Want to fund the entire campaign? You can do that. In return you’ll receive a $25 All Crumbs gift card every week for the rest of your natural life and warm fuzzy feelings for all the bread that will be turned into sandwiches for Food For Thought.
“I am elated about it,” said Jill Bunge, director of Food For Thought. “The way they’re approaching the whole thing is great. People are paying it forward, and they get their own personal benefit. It resonates.”
Building buzz
More than once before Kengo officially opened its doors on Feb. 17, people would peer through the mail slot on the front door and holler in, asking if the place was open yet. There was a lot of buzz surrounding the small, 21-seat restaurant at 38 S. St. Clair St., most of it generated by a creative Kickstarter video that featured Chef Kengo Kato as a superhero saving the day with his sushi skills.
Business partners Josh Wagy and Chef Kato were working with a “tiny budget” and needed a little extra cash, so they took to the Internet seeking $5,000 to build a yakitori grill, which is used for cooking skewered food.
Seventy-three people believed in the vision — and were hungry enough — to donate $5,305. The upfront money was great, but Mr. Wagy said they saw crowdfunding as a way to establish an audience.
“We wanted to build momentum for what we were going to do here,” said Mr. Wagy, who is also the man behind Smashing Toledo, a website/social-media presence that spotlights local restaurants, promoting an eat-local attitude. “Besides us having a limited budget and, obviously, it’s a restaurant, you can always use more money, it was more of an advertising tool and a fun way to build momentum.”
The restaurant’s business has, so far, exceeded the expectations of Mr. Wagy and Chef Kato, Mr. Wagy said.
“It has been really amazing. So far, it has been fantastic,” he said. “Everyone is excited, which makes us even more excited. … The community helped build this restaurant, and now they're showing their support for it.”
Online crowdfunding is nearly without risk, Mr. Ariss said. Donors can claim their perks once a campaign ends, and, really, they do it “out of passion, love, to see something you care about happen. It’s not about a return on investment.”
If a campaign fails on an all-or-nothing platform, such as Kickstarter, money is returned to the backer, and the entrepreneur is back to square one. That’s really the only scary part for entrepreneurs.
Campaign ‘miracle’
Lance Roper said his successful Kickstarter campaign for Actual Coffee was funded “by a miracle.”
He sought $15,000 to buy a larger coffee roaster and expand business. At first, the money came in steadily, but the entire middle of the monthlong campaign there was little, if any, movement.
“But with five or six days left in the campaign, it took off,” Mr. Roper said. “Everyone realized we’re not going to make it if we don’t do something. It was a miracle.”
Now his business has grown to include wholesale and monthly subscription services.
Successful business campaigns have to be run like political campaigns, Mr. Roper said. People have to like the person behind the effort, and they have to like the idea. In a community like Toledo, he said, that’s easy.
“The community wants more artisanal, small businesses that create really high-quality products,” he said. “I had that going for me. … It’s really easy to get connected in Toledo. It’s small, and the people are great.”
The cash raised through crowdfunding is not really “free money.” Recipients usually have to pay tax on at least some of it.
But creators can usually offset some of the income from the crowdfunding project with deductible expenses related to the project, which may include the cost of anything provided to the donors. Creators also may be able to classify certain funds as a nontaxable gift and not income. A gift is something given out of “detached and disinterested generosity” for personal reasons and without the expectation of getting something in return, according to the Kickstarter website.
Contact Taylor Dungjen at tdungjen@theblade.com, or 419-724-6054, or on Twitter @taylordungjen.
First Published March 1, 2015, 5:00 a.m.
