Yum, that sandwich was damn good! As usual! And now Pal’s needs our help! Their existing space can’t sustain them any longer, so they’ve started up a Kickstarter campaign to help fund their move to some place better:
Pal’s is moving into its fourth year inside Tony’s market on 24th St making friends with everyone in the surrounding neighborhood and serving all organic locally sourced innovative sandwich and salad creations.
We have been blessed by having the best and most loyal customers a small local shop could have..our goal has always been to use the best local products in our little bread-surrounded creations
Your inspiration, suggestions, interest and recurring support drive us every day to create new and tasty things to help make your lunch day a little brighter and a little tastier.
Now after almost 4 years inside Tony’s market we have outgrown our current location and we need to move to a new location sometime in February or March of next year. so we can take Pal’s to a new creative level.
Visit the Kickstarter page to see how you can help (mostly you pledge money and they pledge to give you sandwiches and t-shirts). And there’s only a couple days left, so hop to it!
I’ve been happy to contribute to my friends’ Kickstarter campaigns to record their band’s album or make a local film, or for someone with a great idea to fund initial production of some clever product, but I’m getting a little tired of existing businesses expecting people to contribute to the sort of costs that are just part of owning and operating a business. It’s great that they want to expand… so why not take out a small business loan? Put stuff on credit cards? Do the things every other Mission business has done when they’ve decided to expand? Maybe I’m just cranky today…
That was initial reaction too, but I can also see the other side of it. I’ve been working out of my house, two blocks away from Pal’s, for the last five and a half years. It would be lovely if somebody wanted to kickstart me so I could go open a nice little solo law office somewhere instead of working at my kitchen table and in my living room, but I wouldn’t presume to ask people to do so.
On the other hand, Pal’s has more of a community tie than I do, and frankly I envy cool little business that build relationships with their suppliers and their customers. I could see why people might get on board to help just because they like the vibe of the enterprise and want to see it succeed and grow. (Now how do I change my practice? Hmmm…..)
Yeah, I hear you. But there’s some magic community line that makes this okay and somehow they’ve crossed it for me. So there ya go.
I share your confusion. I understand the need for up-front cash, and so I could see them offering, say, a 5-sandwich card for $40 — in effect, a no-interest leap-of-faith loan. But that never seems to be how these things work.
Cinnaholic in Berkeley did something similar awhile back. Instead of a Kickstarter, they just asked people to buy gift certificates — they even offered a 15% discount. So basically, they got extra cash up front, to be paid off over time with purchases, and in exchange, loyal customers got a discount. An additional benefit for Cinnaholic is that I’ll bet a lot of those purchases actually turned into accidental donations from people who forgot to use their whole certificate values, because they rarely go way the hell out to Berkeley — even for totally amazingly delicious cinnamon rolls (raising my hand). (http://vegansaurus.com/post/1211115253/buy-a-gift-certificate-help-cinnaholic)
I felt the same way when Mission Bowling Club had that kickstarter because they went over-budget.
I’ve made two bars in this town and it always goes over-budget. I think pretty much every restaurant/bar does. You spend everything for your baby business.
It all just rubs me wrong, no matter what I think about bowling and sandos.. of which I love.
I’ve got your kickstart right here, pretenders.
I had a shop in the Mission that some folks seemed to like (pardon my vagueness), and was probably beneficial to the neighborhood in some way, but when I was losing too much money, I closed it. Should I have Kickstarted it to help with rent? No. It was a business, not a charity. I didn’t expect anyone else to shoulder my costs for the benefit of having me around.
It’s tough to run a small business in SF – and many of the more creative ones are barely holding it together. Hopefully Pal’s will be successful.