Short Summary
Eleni's Empanadas was establised while on maternity leave with our first son. It was a way for me to contribute to our growing family while exploring and developing my culinary skills. At first making empanadas was purely for the enjoyment at family gatherings; until one day my childhood friend offered to order my product for an event she was having for her own business. Now, three years and two boys later Eleni's Empanadas is an emerging catering business with customers from all over Southern Ontario. Aside from catering my empanadas to food lovers in the region I've had the opportunity to share my skills and knowledge of making these latino favourites for the great people of Toronto in top tier food festivals as a Demo Chef.
This campaign is to help raise money with automating my empanada production and to pay for rent of a commercial kitchen; so that I can go from delivering individual orders to delivering my empanadas to the masses at leading Food Festival and in community pop-up locations in Toronto. Right now I press each empanada shell individually and each empanada is handcrafted. When I have help with the assembly for a large order it takes two full days; that's only assembling 300 pieces. With automating the production of the empanada shells I can press out thousands of shells in minutes which will cut down on my production time and be able to provide my present and future customers with empanadas at a quicker lead time.
My goal is to bring Eleni's Empanadas to as many people as possible this summer and eventually set up a shop where customers can come in an enjoy my food. Every time I'm working on an order my son says in excitement, "Mommy we have a customer today!" I want my sons to be proud of their Mommy and create an Empanada Empire that they may prosper from when they are ready to contribute to society.
What We Need
Currently, my production equipment consists of a food processor for making the dough, two cast iron empanada presses (different sizes) for pressing individual empanada shells and my hands for assembling. These all work well when I have manageable orders of 6 to 8 dozen. However, when I'm preparing a large order of 300+ pieces my food processor heats up too much with fear that it may have met its day. My body aches from pressing out so many pieces and then I have the challenge of storing and baking several sheets of my empanadas.
With the funding from Indiegogo, I will be able to purchase equipment necessary to automate my production and rent a commercial kitchen that has the capacity to store and bake my empanadas. The equipment I need to do that is an automatic empanada press, a commercial size food processor and mobile convection oven (for on site baking at Food Festivals). Also, I would need to rent out a commercial kitchen and hire someone full time to assist me with production.
Automatic Empanada Press = $8000
Commericial Kitchen Rental for 2 months = $2880
Employee Cost for 2 months = $4800
Catering Materials = $320
What You Get
For your incredible generosity you will get a variety of perks. Every contributor will be fed well with my empanadas and other delicious Peruvian dishes. Some will be outfitted smartly with my custom designed aprons (inspired by Japanese apron pattern). Others will be recognized with your name on my menu; much like
Thanksgiving contest winner - Georgina Tziavaras - Gee's Blueberry Bliss and Stavros Kottas - Kottas Classic Chicken The Impact
Helping me raise money to grow my business will mean that my family will have a viable business with which to prosper from. In return you will help to bring Latino food closer to the good people of Toronto who love exploring food from exotic cultures.
Risks & Challenges
Without the generosity and support of contributors like you, my dreams of taking Eleni's Empanadas from being a one woman catering company to an empanada empire will be near impossible. Not too long ago, I had to turn down an offer to vend my empanadas at local charity event because I wasn't able to produce the amount I needed to sell to participate. I don't want that to happen again. The one thing I dislike is saying, "NO!" to opportunities. My hope is that the great people of Toronto and surrounding areas will enjoy my empanadas for every occasion, everywhere. With automating my empanada production I will be able to sell my product at various food festivals and pop-up locations because I will be able to produce more pieces in shorter amount of time.
Other Ways You Can Help
Times are tough for all of us and I will totally understand if you can't be a financial supporter. It would fantastic if you could be a social media supporter and spread the word in the hopes that are others who can contribute to my campaign. Thank you for visiting my campaign and I look forward to meeting you at a Food Festival near you.
