{Local Harvest Cafe in Tower Grove}
Local Harvest is at a crossroads. Financial troubles have brought the locally owned grocery store and cafe in Tower Grove, its cafe downtown, and its catering operation to the brink of closure. Now, co-owners Maddie Earnest and Patrick Horine are trying to save their business with a community fundraising campaign.
In a letter sent today to Local Harvest employees and customers, Earnest and Horine explained that they are seeking to raise $100,000 by Feb. 7 to stabilize their business. To help raise those funds, they are turning to the community and offering supporters two ways to become involved.
One way is to purchase a gift certificate redeemable one year from the purchase date, when 10 percent will be added to its value. Another option is to purchase a Local Harvest cafe punch card for $100. The cafe card gives customers a monthly $10 credit at either cafe location for one year, a $120 value. If Earnest and Horine do not reach their goal by the Feb. 7 deadline, all funds will be returned.
The Scoop talked with Earnest about her fundraising plans. “What we built the [Local Harvest] model on was building a local food community,” Earnest said. “People will have the chance to say…whether it’s important that we continue to exist. Whether it’s worth it. Whether it’s right for them. Obviously we think so, but do they?”
Earnest and Horine note in their letter that they have looked for an equity partner for several months, and “if the campaign is successful, we will continue to look for the right person to come in as an equity partner.”
Local Harvest began in 2007 as a 900-square-foot grocery store on Morgan Ford Road stocked with the goods from small local farmers and producers. Since then, it moved down the street to a larger space, a cafe was added across the street, and locations were added downtown and in Kirkwood. But in August 2013, money troubles forced the grocery/cafe in Kirkwood to close just nine months after it opened. And the newly reconcepted cafe in Tower Grove, which debuted Jan. 17 with a new name (LHC) and a new menu concept, may be too little, too late.
“It’s been nearly seven years that we opened doors to the store, and with all the things that we’ve gone through, right now, as silly as it sounds, we’re probably at our strongest,” Earnest said. “We’ve learned a lot. When you own a business, there are lots of different kinds of problems you can have: money problems, people problems. Right now it’s not people problems, it’s money problems. It seems like something that money can fix.”
Gift certificates and cafe punch cards can be purchased at the grocery store and cafes or online.
-photo by Jonathan Gayman
This article appears in January 2014.