We're starting a business! Please continue reading for many more details. But also be sure to keep up with our progress on D'Lolly's pages below:
And join us for a
Pastry Party on the
last day of our campaign, March 3rd, at Word Up Community Bookshop in Washington Heights!
Fun-Sized Summary
My name is Gio Andollo and I'm a creative entrepreneur, based in New York City. And now my very cool wife, D'Lolly Lopez-Andollo, is poised to become the same! She has a HUGE opportunity to supply wholesale baked goods, made in our home kitchen with lots of love, to a neighborhood coffee shop!
D'Lolly graduated from culinary school in 2010 and has been working toward this moment, the opportunity to own and operate her very own business, ever since. We actually met when I was washing dishes at another neighborhood coffee shop and she was hired on as their head baker. With her encouragement, I left that job to advance my own career and she later left to focus on her own business.
Now we're both strapping on our aprons again, to make D'Lolly's dream a reality.
We've talked quite a bit about what our needs will be but we've conveniently steered away from the simple fact that we don't have the capital to start her business. As her business administrator, it's my job to worry about that... Oh, and did I mention that I'll be her dishwasher, bookkeeper, grocery-shopper, and social media guru as well? Indeed, I'm committed to D'Lolly and her business and I know that with your help to secure the startup capital, she will manage a successful, sustainable, and (most importantly) delicious baking business in Washington Heights and Inwood, NYC!
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Reality
We are indeed asking for a significant amount of money, since we're building D'Lolly's business almost from scratch. As many of our family, friends, and clients will attest, D'Lolly has an amazing gift and talent for baking. She has been doing this for several years now and does have some of the tools and equipment needed. But this new venture represents a much larger scale of baking than she's done in the past. We anticipate that she will need:
- Another oven (we're looking into table-top options)
- Second mixer
- Mini-fridge
- Blender and/or Food Processor
- Better Knife Set
- Oven Thermometer
- Scale
- Baking Pans
- Molds
- Scoops
We actually have a fairly large kitchen, by NYC standards, with a good amount of storage space. However, we'll have to buy shelves, racks, or hanging rods for better organization; cambros, plastic containers and mason jars for food storage.
Those are all D'Lolly's needs. On my side of things:
- New/better/different faucet for kitchen sink
- Larger drying rack
- New laptop (her present computer is old and quickly dying)
- Professional web and logo design
Invest & Get Cool Perks!
Let me first say, if you actually live in Washington Heights, it would behoove you to help bring D'Lolly's d'licious d'lites to the neighborhood, if for no other reason than that you'll get to eat them on a regular basis! But we've also thought of a bunch of very cool perks, incentives to get you invested in D'Lolly's endeavor.
Please check out the perks to the right and find out more about how to have D'Lolly's cookies delivered to your door. And how's about a D'Lolly's Uptown Bakeshop mug to drink down those cookies? Or a new apron with her logo? Please also see about our cocktail party in NYC, music lessons with yours truly, a full-on themed party with cake and live music, and finally a one-on-one baking class with D'Lolly, where you can learn some basics and one of her signature recipes!
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Risks & Challenges
D'Lolly plans to begin supplying the yet-unnamed coffee shop in the next few weeks, whether we're able to raise the money or not. If we are unsuccessful, then we'll have to start out with a significant amount of debt, probably in the form of a loan from our credit union. Of course we'd rather not start out this way, and with your help we won't have to!
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Other Ways You Can Help
We've tried to make it really easy for you help. Even just a $5 donation will enter you for a raffle where you can win entry to our celebration cocktail party with complimentary drinks and a bunch of D'Lolly's recipes to sample!
But besides donations, we'll appreciate anything you can do to help spread word of this campaign. Share our links on social media, follow us on facebook and twitter, tell your friends and neighbors! We'll also greatly appreciate any prayers, good juju, and/or words of affirmation and encouragement as we take on this new venture.
Thank you!
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