Are cookbooks obsolete?
Aaron Lefkove was struggling to raise close to $200,000 to open a New England-style clam shack in a Gowanus, Brooklyn, storefront.
Bank loans were out of reach. “We didn’t have the kind of collateral they wanted,” said Mr. Lefkove, a 31-year-old punk rocker and publisher’s copywriter, nostalgic for family visits to Bigelow’s New England Fried Clams in Rockville Centre, N.Y.
“I liquidated my 401(k) and my I.R.A. as well,” Mr. Lefkove said. “I even sold my guitars.”
It wasn’t enough. He and a partner reached out to friends and family and used their own credit cards. Still not enough. “We picked up investors — some became partners, some would get a return, everyone was structured differently,” he said. “Even that was not enough.”
So to help get his restaurant, Littleneck, over the finish line, the next stop was Kickstarter.com — a Web site that solicits donations to finance art, technology and business projects. Promising little more than good karma, some discounts and a T-shirt, he raised $13,000 from 162 donors — $5,000 more than his goal. With the help of a few final investors, the 38-seat restaurant began serving fried clams and lobster rolls last month. (…)
John Fraser used Kickstarter to raise about $24,000 for his short-lived but well-reviewed pop-up restaurant, What Happens When. And the Brooklyn Grange rooftop farm in Long Island City, Queens, raised more than $20,000 that way.
