Imagine you’re enjoying a perfect morning on Martha’s Vineyard. You can hear the ocean, see the sun shine off of beautiful homes, and smell the fresh bagels you picked up at a local pop-up. If you’d been around the area any time from 2021 to now, chances are you picked up Fantzye Bagels, a locally-sourced sourdough bagel bakery run by Elana Carlson.
Fantzye Bagels quickly grew from a popular pop-up bakery running out of the local farmer’s market into Martha’s Vineyard’s “Best New Business” of 2022. Eventually, Elana decided that the time had come to open up Fantzye’s first brick-and-mortar location. To fund this move, she decided to reach out to the community that helped grow her business to what it is and ran a Honeycomb Credit campaign, raising $75,000 from 88 investors!
How Fantzye got their bagel shop rolling
Fantzye Bagels, a Yiddish name that honors Elana’s grandmother, started when Elana began to bake bagels in 2020 (because who wasn’t baking around then, right?). She began to host pop-ups in the summer of 2021 which became wildly popular around Martha’s Vineyard, hosting 28 bagel pop-ups, 15 dinner events, and 10 private gatherings during the bakery’s inaugural summer.
As a popup, it means that you’re often baking and selling from many different environments, which can become very taxing. Fantzye Bagels baked out of five different kitchens - including a mobile sandwich trailer that they bought to build on their success.
“Over four years, I’ve done 89 popups in 11 different locations, whipped 11,000 pounds of schmear, baked out of five different kitchens, recruited friends to shape bagels, smoke fish, and schlep a ton of stuff.”
Elana came to the conclusion that while the popup life is a ton of fun, it’s also great for Fantzye Bagels to have its own home where it can become a part of the fabric of its community. She located a spot in the town of Kingston, New York.
Building out the brick-and-mortar bagel shop was going to take some funding, so Elana decided to run a Honeycomb Credit investment offering, to allow the hundreds of customers that Fantzye Bagels had enamored over the past four years to invest in the new bakery!
Nothing to “schmear” with community investments
When Fantzye Bagels opened up their Honeycomb Credit campaign, they were met with tons of support from local investors. Some were longtime fans of the bagel shop, like Catherine Yoon, who said, “Your bagels are delicious and I can’t wait until the shop opens!”
Other investors were neighbors and friends who’d known Elana from her time in Martha’s Vineyard. Investor Danielle James said, “I’ve known Elana for many years on Martha vineyard. I can say with 100 percent certainty she is determined to succeed. She will work hard for your investment. Good luck love, I’m betting on you.”
Some of Elana’s investors were her soon-to-be new neighbors in Kingston! Alex Lauri, co-owner of The Rolling Cones, a rock and roll-themed ice cream shop also opening in town, invested and said, “So excited to grow alongside you in Midtown! Congrats and good luck!!”
By the end of the campaign, Fantzye Bagels had $75,000 in investments, which were going to be used to purchase all kinds of infrastructure for the new bakery - a new hood, upgrading utilities, and an HVAC/Cooling system. All these features are instrumental in building the foundation for a bakery that is soon to be a neighborhood favorite!
Watch your business rise with community investments!
Seeing a pop-up shop rise to fame and become a successful brick and mortar store is not a new story for us at Honeycomb Credit. We help this happen all the time by allowing entrepreneurs to use their greatest resource, their community, to invest in their growth. Learn more about Honeycomb investment offerings by filling out the form below!
Kommentare