In coming months, Phil Tadros, the serial food and digital entrepreneur behind Bow Truss Coffee and web development firm Doejo (among other ventures) will launch a platform that allows for crowdsourced investments that support local businesses, called FundedFoods.
The tool builds off of Bow Truss' public-oriented approach to funding (they have an "invest" tab on their website), and comes on the heels of Illinois' crowdfunding equity law, which allows non-accredited investors to fund small businesses.
In other words, neighbors can now fund their local businesses on a small scale. And Tadros wants to use his tech and small business background to make that as seamless as possible.
"You want people who are customers and neighbors taking care of their food businesses and local businesses," Tadros said. "We feel people would support the small businesses they want to support."
"The general public and our fans support us and help us grow," he added. "We're in technology, it only makes sense to build a platform that allows the general public to give you a loan."
The FundedFoods site will let interested investors browse featured projects and choose the amount they want to invest. They agree to terms and a return rate, and they'll start getting paid back (with interest) starting the next month Tadros said. Initially the site will just launch with Tadros and Doejo's affiliated food companies, such as Bow Truss, Aquanaut Brewing Company, Bunny Micro Bakery, and Apotheca Foods. He said they're focused on using the tool with growth-oriented food ventures to ensure that investors get their return. In the future, he sees it as a way to identify, and potentially invest in, other aligned food small businesses.
This tool comes just months after the Illinois Crowdfunding Equity Law came into effect, which allows non-accredited investors invest up to $5,000 per company per year.
Appealing to the public, rather than going to banks for loans, has been how Bow Truss has grown so far said Tadros. Previously they raise $300,000 in public loans through a now-defunct crowdfunding loan service and paid back investors with interest, he said. Tadros added that he is frequently is contacted by people interested in investing small amounts, $1,000 to $5,000, but hasn't been able to work with small investments until now.
"You want people who are customers and neighbors taking care of their food businesses."
For Tadros, tech and coffee shops have always gone hand in hand.
He dropped out of Columbia College and launched several coffeeshops, including Dollop in 2005, where he started working on small web development projects. Those coffeeshop web projects eventually morphed into Doejo, a now eight-year-old web development firm that has built products for Reverb, Dermio, Pandora, Samsung, Andrew Mason, and Brad Keywell among others. In 2012, Tadros decided to use the intel he'd learned from launching products for other companies to start Bow Truss.
"Coffee shops are where a lot of designers and developers are working out of, so it just seemed like it was naturally a part of the same world for me: be in the coffee shops working on projects," he said.
Next up, Bow Truss is set to expand to nine new locations on top of its current eight coffee shops, according to Eater. Current shops include the tech-crowd frequented location on Kinzie and Wells, and a coffee bar that just opened in FoxTrot's West Loop store.
Image credit: The Chicago Chic
