Short Summary

Hi, I’m Bobby Enslow, the owner and founder of INDABA COFFEE. After spending time working in South Africa for an HIV/AIDS clinic, I returned to my home town of Spokane, WA with a renewed passion for the poor and a dream to start a social benefit coffee business.

This indiegogo campaign is to raise money for our second location downtown! It’s been five years since we opened our first location in West Central, and now we are ready to take our business to an up and coming area of downtown. This location will allow us to raise even more money to fight hunger in the Inland Northwest, continue our efforts in West Central, and further our passion for specialty coffee culture. Living and working in West Central, one of the poorest neighborhoods in the State, the largest need we’ve seen is access to food. This is why when we started roasting in 2014 we committed to donate a meal for every bag of coffee sold.

At the end of our first year of rolling out our fight against hunger, we have helped to provide over 2,100 meals through our partnership with Second Harvest Food Bank. With this new location downtown, it is our goal to provide over 10,000 meals in 2015. A lofty goal, but with your contribution, it can become a reality.

What We Need & What You Get

We have been able to secure some financing, however, with your help we can do so much more! Specifically, we’re asking for help raising money for our equipment ($20,000), merchandise ($5,000), and internship program ($5,000).

It is our plan to get the latest state of the art equipment to not only allow us to provide the best cup possible, but also provide the latest in barista training to our interns and staff. This will make them even more competitive in the workplace as we work to empower them in their barista careers.

Part of the funds will go towards the purchase of merchandise that we can then resell to continue our efforts to be self sustainable.

Lastly, we want to provide an even more structured internship program. We’ve been working with Project HOPE to provide at-risk youth with internships, and we want to expand that to provide even more hands on training and tools.

Oh, and by helping out you get some sweet perks!

The Impact

“Bobby, if I wanted to help feed people, couldn't I just give directly to Second Harvest?”

Yes, however, by supporting this project you're dollars go further to create a sustainable source for providing food, job creation/training that supports our local economy, and a community space where relationships are built and strengthened.

Over the last five years we have been in West Central we have seen tremondous change. Nine new businesses, community connectedness, and overall change of perception of the neighborhood. This change has been so prominent that Spokane Teacher’s Credit Union invested and launched a year long marketing campaign featuring West Central and the changes we’ve seen. Check out their video here:

With our roasting operation, we have been able to provide over 2,100 meals in under a year of going live. Our internship program has translated into real world jobs. For example, Nathan Arroyo, an intern from West Central, is now one of our best baristas!

When it comes down to it, by giving to this project you're providing us with the tools to help transform people’s lives, locally and globally.

Risks & Challenges

Our potential risks include: competitors in the marketplace, lack of sales, and inability to meet market demand.

There are a lot of coffee businesses in downtown Spokane. However, we're unique in not only our craftsmenship but also our direct social purpose. We roast all of our coffee in house allowing us to provide the freshest tastiest cup possible using the latest equipment and techniques. And, for every bag of coffee we sell we partner with Second Harvest Food Bank to provide a meal for someone in need.

Lack of sales would obviously affect our ability to be sustainable. I don’t see this being a major issue with the location we’ve secured downtown, however, if there is a lack of buy-in to the higher end coffee niche there could be an issue.

One constraint is our ability to roast enough coffee to meet the growing demand. Our current roaster is running at about 15 hours a week and producing approximately 90 lbs of coffee. We can scale it up to roasting 50 hours a week to produce 300 lbs. Our plan is to purchase a larger roaster before we ever run in to this constraint.

Other Ways You Can Help

If you’re unable to throw in a few dollars, that’s perfectly ok! There are some other ways you can help us out.

1. Go on social media and tell all your friends/followers to support us!

2. Setup a coffee date with a friend who has never been to INDABA.

3. Every time you come in snap a photo and share it on social media with a note about how we are raising money to open downtown.

Don't wait! Please check out the perks and consider giving right now. Every dollar helps in our fight against hunger. Cheers!

UPDATE 2/17/15

LOCATION LOCKDOWN

We are excited to announce that we have locked in a location near Main & Howard downtown called the Bennett Block!

The Inlander wrote up an article about this last year found here and the Spokesman wrote one up here.

We are super excited to keep local coffee growing downtown and to see a historical building like this rejuvenated! We will be close to other local businesses like Boo Radley's, Mizuna, & Rocky Rococo's and other major retailers like Macy's and Apple. Needless to say this is a great location. With your support, we can be a part of some awesome changes downtown. Please spread the word, give a buck or two, and most of all continue to support local businesses.