Jane and Matthew not only met their goal; they exceeded it!
Let's hope this inspires more raw vegan chefs to open more restaurants!
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Jane Howard Crutchfield and Chef Matthew Daniels, the owners of Triangle Raw Foods, have their customers in mind regarding their IndieGoGo campaign to raise money to open a raw foods cafe. The Raleigh, North Carolina duo have been making raw vegan meals and selling them since 2011, first in a van and then from their food truck. They're crowd sourcing for funds because they want to keep the costs of their food down.
Triangle Raw Foods' recent pop up restaurant events have been sold out, as Kathy Hanrahan reports for WRAL.com. She notes that everything on their menu is dairy-free, gluten-free, vegan and locally sourced. And it's also all-raw.
The pair are open about their need for crowd sourcing. They write:
As two people with less than perfect credit histories (based on poor financial decisions and mistakes we made when we were younger), getting loans from banks is pretty much out of the question.
Also, organic prepared raw food can be very costly and time-consuming to make, and we don't want to charge a fortune for it just so we can make money to pay back big loans. We want to charge just enough to cover the food cost and our time/labor.
As a very small business, we really only make enough money to make ends meet. We could wait until we can afford it ourselves, but our friends and customers have encouraged us to at least give this a shot. If it works out, awesome; if not, we'll continue on the road we are currently on :)