Welcome to the Crowdsourcing Mornings segment! Every weekday morning, Geek Alabama talks about and features one crowdsourcing project from crowdsourcing sites such as Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and others. The hope with Crowdsourcing Mornings is to feature and help a project be successful and reach its fundraising goal. Please enjoy today’s featured project!
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My name is Sara Fludd and I am the Chief Waffle Officer (CWO) of Pop Goes the Waffle, an innovative waffle company dedicated to creating exceptional sweet and savory waffles liege waffles and waffle pops.
If you’ve never had an authentic liege waffle – you are missing out on one of the great joys of life! . Liege waffles are made from buttery, brioche dough that is studded with imported Belgian pearl sugar. When the waffle is baked – this pearl sugar caramelizes and creates a perfectly sweet waffle that doesn’t need syrup. Created in Liege, Belgium in the 18th century – liege waffles are still sold on the streets of Belgium as an anytime snack, much like pretzels are sold in NYC.
Pop Goes the Waffle was founded in 2017 and I’m often asked, Why Waffles? I have been in love with waffles since my first box of Eggo Waffles in kindergarten. Many years, and many waffle irons later I was gifted a fancy Belgian iron for Mother’s Day. While living in CT for a decade, waffles became a special snow day treat for our family. Lots of snow days meant lots of waffle recipes – and the idea for Pop Goes the Waffle was born.
In 2018 we started out as a tent pop-up at area events and markets, then expanded to our food truck – Blossom – in 2019. Blossom continues to be all over the Bay bringing waffley goodness to legions of fans.
During the pandemic of 2020, we launched a small eCommerce site to keep our waffle fans happy while in person service wasn’t an option. As you can imagine, this rapid growth means we quickly outgrew our 532 sq ft commissary, and our storage unit, and the entire sunroom in my house. In early 2021 we knew the time was right to find a larger space to expand and scale our business. After months of searching, a few hits/misses, we circled back to a property that we had seen way back in 2017. At that time we were trying to decide if we wanted to go with a food truck or storefront, so we never did anything more than drive by. Flash forward to 2021 when everything we saw was either too small, too expensive – or both, we gave this property another look. It was still for sale (that gave us pause), BUT the agent was about to post it for lease. Kismet, am I right?
This larger space will allow us to expand our product line for eCommerce and retail. Expanded cold storage means we can substantially grow our wholesale accounts. So in Spring 2021 we signed the lease and got to work. This building is a diamond in the rough ROUGH. But we are always up for a challenge. It has been sitting vacant for the better part of a decade so there were (are) mechanical, structural issues to contend with. Some fell to the owner, others fell to us. We have three major opportunities with this new space:
1 – Tripling our kitchen size to accommodate retail/wholesale expansion
2 – Creating production/storage space for eCommerce operations
3 – Building a cafe space to serve waffles and beverages
How You Can Help
Tripling kitchen size means more plumbing, more electrical, more equipment, grease traps, exhaust hoods, etc. So our budget was quickly consumed by getting the kitchen up and running.
While we are handling the boring (but necessary) stuff like mechanical upgrades, we need your help with the fun part of the cafe build. Pastry cases, cabinetry, flooring, seating , a snazzy menu board, sound system, and so on.
We need your support and we appreciate your generosity at whatever level you’re able to give. And we’ve got some really awesome rewards!
As of December 22nd, this project has raised $23,200 of their $20,000 goal. This project has 2 days left to raise as much as it can. For a pledge of $15, you will get one magnet. For a pledge of $30, you will get one coupon for a waffle and coffee. To learn more and to pledge money, go to: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/popgoesthewaffle/pop-goes-the-waffle-builds-a-waffle-cafe?
Categories: Crowdsourcing Mornings Stuff
