Chef Entrepreneur, Gary Usher, launched an ambitious crowdfunding campaign to raise £50k in 24 hours for a fifth restaurant, Pinion in Prescot, Merseyside, and broke his own record by raising the funds in an astonishing 60 minutes!
A year since his last record-breaking crowdfunding campaign and after teasing his Twitter followers for over a month with a series of short videos, Gary Usher and his team launched the £50k Kickstarter campaign to secure funds to open a fifth restaurant in Merseyside’s Prescot.
In the first 15 minutes, a whopping £16k was raised, with over 200 backers. By the first 30 minutes, the figure had reached £31,405, and by 22:00 the full £50k had been achieved, with a staggering 660 backers.
Gary Usher Comments: “Looking in on this it could look quite nuts, but this Kickstarter didn’t (although technically, it actually did) just happen overnight. I don’t think it’s as simple as saying “oh I’m going to kickstart a restaurant” – a lot of our supporters have been with us for years, and we really feel as if we’ve opened our last three restaurants together.
“I said I wanted this crowdfunding to be completely transparent so that it was a recipe that anyone could then just take & replicate somewhere else. But I think I was wrong. There’s no recipe. There’s no handbook. It’s about the people that support and believe in you.”
Pinion’s menu will feature freshly baked bread and humble, bistro dishes, such as a beef braise with truffle and parmesan chips and a classic tart for dessert. Pinion will be very much in the same style as Gary’s other restaurants; Sticky Walnut in Chester, Burnt Truffle in Heswall, Wreckfish in Liverpool and Hispi in Manchester.
In May 2017, Gary broke crowdfunding records by raising over £200k for his fourth restaurant, Wreckfish, in Liverpool. This is the most money ever raised for a restaurant crowdfunding campaign in the UK, supported by 1,522 backers.
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