Farmers Market
We’re back! October 1 & 8, 8AM-1PM. October is the last month of the summer hours so get ready for the market to start an hour later come November 1.
Pop-up @ Boycott
Back here too! As long as the weather cooperates: September 28 & October 5. Apologies for missing the one last week, Sept 21, but some other work came up despite the nice weather.
No More Food Festivals?
We HIGHLY appreciate anyone and everyone who came out to the Eat to Live Vegan Food Festival this past weekend but that was A LOT of effort on our end without a lot of return. In our experience it’s really hard to prove any actual benefit to these types of events. I’m reminded of a piece in the LA Times from 2019 that highlighted some of the issues with very large food festivals. It’s hard to say any of that was happening here but there are some valid critiques. We’re really on the fence about ever doing something like this again and leaning heavily towards never again.
And Now For The Best News
We’re funded baby!! We’ve been approved for our loan through Seed Commons and it’s the biggest sigh of relief to come our way in a long time. It looks like we’re approved for approximately $55,000 with about $10-11,000 of that being allocated for remaining equipment needs, a $4,000 cushion, and the remainder for however it’s needed. To this day we’ve put in about $20,000-$25,000 of our own funding that we’ve managed to save over the years. That’s come at the price of not paying ourselves but it all seems to be paying off now. This is the first debt we’ve incurred and in terms of loans we couldn’t be happier with the way this loan works. We cannot express our appreciation to the Southeast Center for Cooperative Development enough in helping us secure this and supporting us along the way. We’ve built a relationship with them that will continue to last as they help guide us in creating our co-op culture, hiring, and all of the nitty gritty things that come along with opening a business.
Next Steps For the Store
We’re really, really, really on the hunt now for hiring at least one other person but ideally a couple more. Here’s a link to our job post: https://luluscafeandbakery.com/open-positions/. While that’s happening we’ll be figuring out all of the other things we have to figure out like building out an espresso bar, getting a new breaker installed for the bread oven, troubleshooting our leaking ice machine, setting up the espresso machine, plumbing the dishwasher/ice machine/espresso machine, and surely one hundred other things that don’t come to mind at the moment.
Thanks again for all the support and we’ll see ya soon!