Financing Our Foodshed (9 page)

With all these orders, Mykal was fast outgrowing her home kitchen, and she and her husband began shopping for a storefront downtown where they could add a retail business. They found an ideal space, but the move would require capital for renovation and the purchase of refrigerated display cases, a commercial oven, and a sign for the building.

Happily, she found Slow Money NC, though by a somewhat circuitous route.

When Abilicious Bakery closed, Abi listed her nearly new commercial oven on Craigslist. It was exactly what Mykal needed. Having received a Slow Money loan to purchase the oven herself, it seemed only fitting to Abi that she make a Slow Money loan to Mykal. She
spent some time getting more familiar with Mykal’s business and getting to know Mykal. And they found a way to make it work.

Abi went from being a Slow Money borrower to being a Slow Money lender, and Mykal got a nearly new industrial oven and a new friend.

A week later, the oven made its way to the new Dandalia Bakery & Coffee House in Sanford, NC. Now, Mykal’s fresh baked goods and coffee are available to a larger audience every day (their shop is at one of the busiest intersections in town). Now that she’s had time to get settled into her new space, I think it’s time we commissioned a special Slow Money NC cupcake!

“I’ll grow wherever I’m planted,” seems a worthwhile philosophy, and her popular bakery and cupcake business is evidence that she is right.

“We’re here to stay,” Mykal says of their new location. “This summer, we plan to add smoothies, featuring local seasonal fruits. We are connecting with more of the local farmers, hoping to buy more from them to go into our desserts.” For Mykal, this is one dandelion wish come true.

Which brings us back to the purpose of this project, to build a resilient local foodshed while we also build community — truly the sweet side of Slow Money.

Making a Difference — One Loan at a Time Angelina expanded her restaurant using credit card debt — until we came along and took her interest rate from 18% to 2%. Making delicious food, bought from local farmers, is her mission and why her restaurant is so popular.

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We know when it comes to food, slow is better. Food that is carefully grown, nurtured with intent, and thoughtfully harvested and processed, makes for wonderful eating. The Slow Food Movement, started by Carlo Petrini in the 1980s, proclaimed this, and the idea caught on. The Slow Food Movement has spawned restaurants, international conferences, and local chapters — all a wonderful coming together of folks who care about consciously produced and prepared food.

Now we are taking that lesson and applying it to finances. We are slowing our
money
down — making conscious, thoughtful choices about where to put our money so it can have a beneficial impact.

Altruism: “The greatest good for the greatest number.” I memorized that for a vocabulary lesson in high school. I remember loving the sound of it. It sounded fair and smart — an honorable principle to live by and strive for.

In the last decade, we have seen a big chunk of money shift from the poor and the working and middle classes to the 1%. By all indications, it’s not coming back anytime soon — maybe not for a generation — maybe never. What will the end result of this be? A reactionary
militarization of the 99% who may feel the need to protect what little is left to them, and a parallel, more sophisticated militarization of the 1% to make sure they maintain their comfortable luxuries?

Or is there a more equitable possibility — one where we learn to share?

Given the choice, I’d rather we figure out how to do the latter. To me, Slow Money seems altruistic — and a great way to begin to share.

Around the country, folks who are concerned about ensuring access to sustainably farmed, locally grown food are creating new ways to provide community capital to do what our banks will not. They are making equity-style investments, starting investment clubs, and making low-interest loans to small- and medium-scale farmers, to restaurants that specialize in local foods, and to a host of other endeavors that support the local food economy.

Slow Money NC is busy bringing people together so they can meet and build relationships. Out of these friendships, farmers who need a cash infusion to grow not only their crops, but also their businesses, may find caring, enthusiastic lenders to help make that happen.

Slow Money NC is a simple way for mission-related investors to financially support nearby food entrepreneurs.

To quote of one of our Slow Money lenders:

Creating that “solid social dividend” is one of the main objectives of Slow Money.

But we need more people to understand this and join the Slow Money movement. We need people who can help build Slow Money networks in their communities and help get more money flowing to our small food enterprises. And we need them now.

Why? Because we have talented chefs like Angelina, Stephanie, and many others, who care about small farms, and they need our help.

Angelina Koulazakis is one of those special food entrepreneurs. I get a huge boost just walking through the door of her place.

Our small town, Pittsboro, is at the very center of North Carolina. At the crossroads of downtown Pittsboro, you can find Angelina cooking up a storm. As you enter her restaurant, Angelina’s Kitchen, the welcome is immediate. Flyers for local events fill the bulletin board on your right, and off to the left are boxes of fresh, local food that the farmers have just dropped off that will be making their way into the Daily Special.

When you walk up to place your order, the kitchen is right in front of you. Only a counter with menus, a cash register, and a plate of homemade cookies separate you from the trays of cheese and spinach pies going in and out of the oven, the sink where someone is washing local parsley for tabouli, and the grill where pitas are warming. You can lean around the glass screen to see the dozen or so items that go into your Greek salad. If you are high maintenance (like me), you may even ask the salad maker to add a few extra Calamata olives and fewer rice-filled grape leaves.

The menu changes daily. Of course, there is the usual Mediterranean fare — hummus, avgolemono (chicken) soup, spanakopita,
falafel, gyro sandwiches, and made-from-scratch baklava made with local honey. In addition to the standard menu, each day a seasonal vegetable and meat dish are on offer. Most of the ingredients for these specials come from nearby farms.

Angelina buys as much local food as she can. This cheerful Greek restaurant is a godsend to farmers who find themselves with extra produce at the end of a farmers market, as well those from whom Angelina orders regularly. And it’s certainly a delight to eaters looking for delicious, healthy, hearty, locally grown fare.

But Angelina’s Kitchen isn’t exactly what she had planned. Angelina and her husband, John, moved from New Mexico to North Carolina in 2005. They had been working for large commercial construction contractors, John as a surveyor and project manager and Angelina as a contract administrator. Their intention was to buy some land, get jobs in their fields and settle into a “fun life” in North Carolina.

But life took a different turn.

Angelina’s welcoming smile.
Credit: Bett Wilson Foley

When Angelina heard that nearby Chatham County residents were being invited to take part in a “walkability study” for downtown Pittsboro, she was intrigued. She was interested in urban planning as a possible career path, and this sounded like a way to make some “town planning” connections in Chatham.

As it turned out, there were so many “walkers” that we were split into teams to cover various sections of town. So, one pleasant Saturday morning, I found myself strolling around Pittsboro with this delightful, engaging Greek woman who I had only just met. Lesley Landis, the mayor’s wife, was also with us. We looked around, scribbling on our evaluation forms the innumerable good ideas we had for improving our small town. We had a marvelous time, and Angelina and I have been friends ever since.

It was typical Angelina: Because she didn’t know anyone yet, she brought along some of her homemade spinach pies that day. She and I share a similar cultural style. Going somewhere and meeting new people? Bring food. And of course, they were yummy — the real deal, not the frozen packaged kind, and I asked if she ever made them to sell. She was open to that idea, and I put in an order for our upcoming Pottery Kiln Opening Weekend. Lesley wanted some as well, so Angelina found herself with a couple of “catering orders.”

This led to several more “spinach pie gigs,” as folks around town got a taste of her talents, and thus “the humble beginning,” as she calls it, of Angelina’s Kitchen. She was coaxed into running a small Greek food stand at a local event called Fishy Friday. After only a few Fridays, people were begging her to take it up a notch and open a restaurant. When a spot opened up a block from the center of town, she and John bravely took it.

“John was working as a surveyor when we found a spot in Pittsboro to start the kitchen,” Angelina laughed as she told me their story. “I asked John to leave his job to help design and build out the kitchen... and the poor guy has never had a chance to go back.”

Starting out, they ran just a take-out counter, but when the space opened up next door, John cut out a hole in the wall (an arch, to be accurate), and a much requested seating area soon appeared.

I knew the initial upfit had taken most of their savings. When I saw that she was expanding, I was concerned. I felt partially responsible for encouraging her to take on this business venture, and it seemed only fair to offer help. Our Slow Money project was in its infancy, having done only one loan so far. But if anyone deserved affordable capital, it was Angelina. From the time she started making those spinach pies, she had looked to local farmers to source as many ingredients as she could. For her, working with small local farmers was instinctual — or cultural — or both.

One day, I went in after lunch and sat down with a question. Do you need money to help with this expansion? Because she and John had not lived in the area for long, and neither had salaried positions, bank financing for the restaurant (or even a line of credit on their house) was out of the question. So, they had put the expansion costs on their credit cards and planned on making interest-only payments until the business grew.

They were paying 18% interest. I was sure we could do better than that. We settled on just a few percent, and I made my own first Slow Money loan. It was a great place to start. Gary Thompson, who had been on board since the birth of our Slow Money project, and who also knew Angelina, joined in with a similar loan. Together, we were able to bring her monthly payments down to just a third of what they had been, and that included principal
and
interest.