Box Populi is a project started by a group of local artists, cooks, and baristas who are interested in building new forms of worker ownership in Little Rock. We bought an industrial tricycle with a platform that has a weight rating of 600 pounds as well as the aluminum tubing and sheeting to begin fabricating the cafe cart. When it is finished we will serve hot sandwiches, artisanal pizzas, coffee, tea, and pies to people in the downtown area. We'll source the greater part of the produce from local farmers and are partnering up with a startup bread company. Pies and jams will be bought at premium prices from sweet ole grannies.
Here's the caveat, and what puts the Populi in the box-
In a time where most new businesses serving gourmet local food is inaccessible to working people, you'll be able to get a hot pastrami on rye and a cup of joe for under six dollars; a chicken salad sandwich on rolled oat honey wheat and a sweet tea for five. Since we don't have a panel of investors or a ceo looking to scrape the cream off the top of the bucket, we can pass the savings on to you. We have elected a ghost ceo. ;) fifteen percent of profits go into an investment trust that we own and is spent in building more worker cooperatives.
All workers are worker/owners and at the end of the week after we reconcile the books, and after paying tribute to the ghost(which is us) we distribute the profits to the workers for the week.
It is an exciting project and hopefully we will grow big enough to have a coffee shop and microbrewery. We're asking for contributions from our friends and allies to give us that little extra boost to get us rolling down the road in style