Financing Our Foodshed (10 page)

Our loan also stopped those high-priced interest payments from going out of our community to a far-away bank. Instead, that money went back into their business, where it was needed most. Having extra capital made it easier for her to continue buying from local farmers, maintaining her commitment to sourcing locally raised food.

It is a circle of gratitude. Angelina loves good food, and she loves her farmers. She clearly enjoys her customers, and, in turn, we all adore her right back.

Over the next months and years, she became our poster child and our loudest cheerleader. She comes to Slow Money NC events
and raves about what her loan and the Slow Money NC network meant for her business. She’s a great ambassador. We often hold Slow Money gatherings in her restaurant. And, of course, we eat there whenever we want authentic, locally sourced food — and time with Angelina and John.

Angelina understands how to “pay it forward,” and she gives her business to other Slow Money borrowers when she can, She refers her own customers to them as well. Recently, when she was asked if she could supply vegan desserts to our local co-op grocery store, she suggested they contact another Slow Money borrower, Stephanie of Sweeties Vegan Bakery in Chapel Hill.

When Angelina had a big catering job coming up, she brought in three other Slow Money entrepreneurs to help her fill out the menu.

After a year or so, Angelina’s coolers began to fail. She had bought them “used” at a price she could afford, and they had been repaired several times. Now it was clear that they would soon need to be replaced. Angelina has since found a better source for used equipment, and they had two newer models that would do just fine. But paying for them was a problem. So, she and John made another request for help.

It is now nearly two years since we made those first two loans to Angelina. The word about Slow Money NC has spread, and we now have people contacting
us
asking how they can make a Slow Money loan. People are beginning to understand that their money has power and that we vote with every dollar we spend. Loaning money to local farmers and the businesses that support them has powerful results, including great food to enjoy, a resurgence of smaller farms, recharged topsoil, and a stronger, more resilient local food economy. The challenge is how to plug in and — in the best sense of altruism — do the greatest good for the greatest number.

Slow Money seeks to make peer-to-peer loans between people who know one another — people who are friends. Lenders understand
that they need to be prepared to lose the money they’re putting in. But even with that caveat, there is still a line of people ready and willing to make Slow Money loans. For Angelina’s second loan, we divided the amount they needed for the coolers by three, and it was easy to find three friends who wanted to help.

One lender is the executive director of a regional farm advocacy group. Another is Gary Simpson, a retired Lutheran pastor, who is best known in our community for his work with non-profits and as a citizen activist. The third is a young man studying to become a massage therapist. He eats at Angelina’s regularly and has a sister who is a farmer in western North Carolina. They each met with Angelina, worked out the terms of a loan, wrote their check, and filled in a Promissory Note. Angelina and John now have two shiny, newer coolers to keep the business going, and three more lenders have joined the Slow Money NC “family.”

For these three lenders, the loan was a big commitment, but they all understand that providing community capital makes a crucial difference. If we want places like Angelina’s Kitchen to be there when we get hungry for delicious, locally produced food, we need to jump in and make it happen. After making his loan to Angelina, Gary said, smiling, “So many people benefit from this, it’s a win-win all around.”

Our lenders are ordinary people doing something quite extraordinary.

Those coolers should last another ten years. Hopefully, we will be enjoying Angelina’s Kitchen at least that long.

In some ways, Angelina’s business has come full circle because they now also have a substantial catering trade. Angelina gets requests from food trucks and farmers markets that want her product, and she is a local favorite at weddings, open houses, birthdays, ribbon cuttings, anniversaries, and the like.

I go by the restaurant whenever I get a chance. Sometimes it’s for the smell of the moussaka baking, or to watch the beef/lamb mixture slowly spinning on the spit, or for a perfect Greek salad, but mostly it’s for the sound of Angelina’s laughter that regularly fills the air.

I have been to Neal’s Yard in London, one of the most famous cheese shops in the world. And, in the last couple of years, we have been enjoying the growing number of excellent locally made cheeses that are showing up at our farmers markets and in the cheese case of our local co-op grocery store. But at a NC Botanical Garden Sculpture Show reception, I couldn’t stop myself. Patrick had been busy. Two of his handsome cheese trays flanked a floral centerpiece. Each cheese was labeled with the name, source, and the type of milk it was made from, so it was easy to know what we were eating. They were all fabulous. He had added dried fruit, nuts, pickles, and thinly sliced meats along with baskets of bread. We had plans to go out to dinner after the reception, but by the time the event was over, I was full.

Patrick Coleff is the creator of the Reliable Cheese Company in downtown Durham, the one and only place in our area where you get the level of service and quality one would expect from a Paris
fromagerie.
He’s been open just less than a year, but he’s been passionate about cheese for over a decade.

For five years, Patrick worked in the retail cheese industry in New York for top stores and nationally recognized brands (Murray’s Cheese, Dean & DeLuca). He taught classes, hosted demonstrations, and wrote a weekly cheese article for the Apartment Therapy website. When he was the head product buyer at a small gourmet retail shop, he began dreaming about creating a similar shop of his own. Then, family connections brought Patrick and his wife Genevieve back to North Carolina.

He explained:

Their idea was simple. Friendly and knowledgeable staff, great cheese that’s well taken care of and cut to order, and a store that’s both exciting to work in and to visit. A store that showcases cheese not as a commodity, but as a product of tradition, hard work and, most importantly, a product of passionate farmers and cheesemakers around the globe. They also wanted to highlight the talents of our local cheesemakers. And they would offer sandwiches and salads made with locally produced and freshly baked bread, sustainably raised meats, and produce from our abundant farmers markets. The result: unique, delicious, and wholesome food.

Their first business plan was over 30 pages long. It included all the pertinent financials, their website plan, a detailed marketing and sales strategy, and sales forecasts. There were pie charts and graphs, a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats), and much more.

When I read the original version in the summer of 2010, I particularly liked the sections, “Competition” and “Buying Patterns.” Like most highly skilled artisans, Patrick sets the bar high, and I admired his confidence.

Patrick believed his customers would care about the source of their cheese — the treatment of the animals involved, whether the food came from a small producer or a factory, whether it was
locally made
and how environmentally friendly the production was. And he was certain that there was interest and demand for the sort of artisanal products Reliable Cheese Company would offer. He was right. I live almost an hour away, and I have been there numerous times.

As they considered one potential location, then another, they fine-tuned their vision, and the financial projections evolved and changed. But one section of their proposal, the one that to me predicted their potential to succeed, remained the same. It was their husband and wife management team.

Patrick had that five years of experience in the specialty food industry, with a focus on cheese. Genevieve had over a decade of experience creating websites for brands such as Sherwin-Williams, Bon Appétit, Vanity Fair, and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, and she was on board to help with marketing and administrative duties.

That sounded very familiar.

Having run a business with my husband for the past 30 years, I’ve learned that if you both put your heart, soul, and every ounce of energy you can muster into the thing, you just might have a chance of making it.

In the summer of 1983, Mark and I left Connecticut and headed 12 hours south to move into a “slightly ramshackled yellow farmhouse at the end of a dead end road” as a local reporter quite generously described our Shangri-La. When we left, my dad said to Mark, “She’s your ace in the hole.” Mark wasn’t entirely sure what he meant
by that, but he never forgot it. I had grown up helping my dad in his veterinary practice that was next door to our house, so Dad knew I could run a business. He understood, far better than we did at the time, what an asset it would be to have a loyal, caring partner with some business experience to help start and run the pottery we hoped to build. We have worked as a successful team for three decades, and so far, so good.

I hoped Patrick and Genevieve would be able to do the same.

Patrick and Genevieve sought financing as best they could. Their experience with traditional lending was typical of what I have heard again and again in today’s economic climate — loans are nearly impossible to obtain for higher risk ventures like food-related businesses. Even their high credit scores and Genevieve’s full-time employment were not enough for them to get bank financing.

Eventually, like so many resourceful entrepreneurs, they were able to put together several layers of financing. Some of the capital came from family and friends who were willing to forego being paid back anytime soon. They raised a chunk from a peer-to-peer lending service called Lending Club, which they are thankful for, but the interest rate is very high. They also used a “crowdfunding” website, and although the amount they raised was small, that campaign brought them investors who contacted them later, offering larger amounts. It also produced a crowd of customers anxiously awaiting their opening day.

But they still needed help.

A couple of people who understood the value of Slow Money — and who shared Patrick’s vision — met with him at a local coffee shop. The conversation led from cheese to the importance of supporting local farmers. Patrick had already made contact with several local cheesemakers and planned to carry their products.

Because he wouldn’t need large quantities to carry a particular style of cheese, like a conventional store does, he planned to sell several hard-to-find local cheeses — styles that were not usually available without a visit to a farmers market or even the producing farm itself.

Eventually the conversation got around to financing and what Patrick needed next. By the time they got up to leave, Patrick had an affordable loan to pay for his locally made, custom wood shelving and moved one step closer to opening his doors.