The team behind successful North Perth small bar The Classroom has launched a crowd-funding campaign to develop a second venue in Northbridge.
Catering company Cocktail Gastronomy, which opened The Classroom in 2012, is planning to open a Chinese-themed restaurant called Lucky Chan's Laundry and Noodlebar on William Street in 2015.
Instead of shouldering the capital costs alone, the business has opted to tap into the increasingly popular crowd-funding method of sourcing investment.
The Classroom co-owner Andrew Bennett told Business News the team wanted to incorporate the desires of potential clients with Lucky Chan’s.
“We started The Classroom, as a lot of hospitality businesses do, in a bit of a vacuum without the input of potential clients or customers, not with the intention of doing so but just because that is how business is done,” Mr Bennett said.
“With the second venue we really wanted to make it a community friendly place and we thought ‘why don’t we just ask people about their desires and what they want it to be like’?
“At about that time crowd-funding was really starting to take off.”
The idea is that supporters and would-be customers can make a pledge through the crowd-funding website Kickstarter.
Pledges can be for as little as $5 or as much as $20,000, with the aim to raise $100,000 in total.
In return, supporters will receive recognition in one of several ways – their name would be included on the restaurant’s wall or a chair named after them, for example.
Mr Bennett said an application for a restaurant class of liquor licence had been lodged, which would hopefully allow Lucky Chan’s to trade until 4am – well past the stipulated midnight closing time placed on small bars.
He said Lucky Chan’s would then fill a gap in the Northbridge market where most of the venues were forced to close at midnight.
“Unless you want a kebab or a burger there aren’t a lot of other options, so we wanted to offer another option for people," he said.
