with a site in Carnaby.
Montoya’s investment, yet to launch, is an equity crowdfund, which will give diners and investors shares in the future business, while Sonora and Ombra’s platform is Kickstarter, which gives rewards — from single meals to full venue hire — to backers. Forno’s bid runs until 25 December, with Sonora’s ending on 6 December; one of the terms of Kickstarter is an “all or nothing” clause whereby projects must be fully funded to receive the investment sought.
The last three years have only made those traditional routes tougher for restaurants. With financial relief from, and inflation pushing up interest rates, the cost of money via loans has risen; businesses are already laden with debt; and banks’s risk aversion to giving out those loans has risen accordingly. Taken together, these circumstances create a dilemma for restaurants, with reserves depleted by the pandemic and the opportunity to replenish them shrunk by inflation.
But the same financial forces are squeezing customers’s finances, too, making the comparative ease of crowdfunding stickier than it was before. The difference between these bids for expansion and the ability of international names like