Short Summary
The Bandit Queen:
Ramen Bar, Public House, Purveyor of Fine Teas, and Respite for the Modern-Day Adventurer
The Bandit Queen will serve Grand Rapids' downtown late night and lunchtime populace as a fun, welcoming, turn-of-the-century bar, serving not whiskey, but Ramen noodles and other East-Asian street-food specialties not currently represented in West Michigan.
We'll be focusing on quick, healthy, cheap meals, based on local and seasonal ingredients and traditional techniques. A perfect last-stop after a night at the bar, a great escape from work on your lunch break, and a much-needed service for those people who work late downtown and often are at a loss for a decent meal late at night.
Our style is based on old Trade Route culture, sharing the mysteries of our travels and the bounty of our spice trade with our favorite Port of Call, downtown Grand Rapids.
Most of all, we want a place that you love to go; not because it's "fancy" or "trendy", but rather because you can get a good meal, tell some good stories, and feel well-cared for.
What We Need & What You Get
We've done the preliminary work, building out the space for our other business, Propaganda Doughnuts, with the intention of expanding into the Bandit Queen when the time was right. Therefore, the large-scale build-out and construction is already finished.
Now that we've "built the house", we need your help to "fill it with furniture". Our shopping list that you're helping us complete consists of:
bowls & serviceware (as eating soup out of one's hand is ill-advised)
teacups & teapots
commercial steam kettle
bar top
bar stools
shelving/storage behind bar
minor kitchen buildout (extra plumbing/sinks, additional electrical)
bar coolers
refrigerator
new sink in guest restroom (current sink is garage-quality)
new tile in entryway (current tiles horribly damaged)
- signage for the storefront (so you can find us!)
As we've never been comfortable asking for money with nothing in return, we've worked very hard at coming up with the most exciting and fun perks as we can manage, to best show our gratitude for your support of our project.
We're most excited about our "Bowl Club", the ramen-shop version of a brewery's Mug Club, where we're having a skilled local ceramics artist make customized ramen bowls available only to our Bowl Club members, that will be on display for the members' use, and earn them discounts and passage to members' events.
We've got all sorts of other "thank you"s, from our great t-shirts, to Chef dinners, to a full-scale backyard barbeque for 30 of your friends, cooked by our bandit troupe. We hope to show you just how much your support means to us.
The Impact
With the early success of our first project, Propaganda Doughnuts, we're really demonstrating the value in interesting, small-scale, quality food, and its contribution to a vibrant downtown life. We're working hard to support and develop an area of downtown that used to be a powerful commercial strip, but has over the years fallen into disenfranchisement. With your support of our projects, you're not only securing yourself a good place to eat, but you're securing another facet of culture to our downtown life, and you're helping to improve an area of your city that is long-overdue for some hard work and love.
Other Ways You Can Help
Our projects rely on you and the value you place in your community.
We recognize that not everyone can donate huge amounts of money to a project, but we want to remind you that every donation is sincerely valuable, and even if you can't make a monetary contribution, you can help immensely by sharing, posting, tagging, talking about, and spreading the word with as much vim and vigor as you can muster, and that's worth gold to us.
Show your support to The Bandit Queen, and she'll have your back for always.
