This guest post was written exclusively for The Restaurant Technology Guys by Mainvest.
The 4 benefits of local investment for your restaurant:
- Flexibility
When starting out with a restaurant, cash flow can be unpredictable. Coming out of a pandemic, this is especially true. That’s where revenue sharing notes can be helpful in budgeting and obtaining debt that won’t break the bank. Each quarter, you share a fixed percentage of your revenue with your investors. You choose the percentage of revenue (and all the other terms) to offer investors.
2. Maintain ownership
When you’re building a restaurant, whether it’s your first sandwich shack or your eighth fine dining project, it’s your baby. While equity investors can be valuable resources, turning to community investors can allow you to access additional capital without diluting ownership and control.
3. Increased customer loyalty
Because your investors are local, they have an interest in your business succeeding because they’re economically and emotionally tied to it. From an economic standpoint, your success also belongs to your investors, making them more likely not only to frequent your business, but encourage others to do the same. Communities that support local businesses want to see them succeed, so even those that have not invested may still prioritize your business as a show of support.
4. Marketing buzz
Because running an investment campaign is essentially a marketing campaign, you can excite your earliest customers and get them invested in your growth before opening day. Press, digital advertising, email marketing, and heightened social media presence are all expected outcomes of an investment campaign that will support marketing efforts long-term.
