An update and a change to the hours at our cafe: Earlier this year we found ourselves on the verge of closing all of our operation but before we did, we decided to tell our community and see if we could work together to save Local Harvest. The response was overwhelming and we were able to raise enough money to save the core business. Since then, we have paid off our tax obligations in full and made significant progress on our vendor debts. With our top priority being our community and making sure we survive for the long-term, we have focused on the various pieces of our business and looked for areas of weakness and areas of strength. A few months ago we identified our two weakest pieces, the dinner service at LHC and the Monday through Friday breakfast and lunch service at LHC. The dinner service was causing the most financial problems and we didn’t see a way to fix it, so we ceased doing dinner. Our hope was that it would allow us to focus on the Monday-Friday breakfast and lunch service in order to bring it into a profitable place. We revamped the menu and streamlined parts of the operation and made this service more organized and well-run than it had ever been. The problem was that we weren’t seeing enough customers and the financial numbers continued to be far off-balance. We are obligated to our community to run Local Harvest in the best way that we can and at this point that means stopping our Monday through Friday breakfast and lunch service. This Friday, August 1, will be our last breakfast and lunch service. We realize this may not be the most popular decision to make, but it is the most responsible one. So many of you generously stepped up and made contributions this past winter and are still in possession of punch cards dated August - December. These will continue to be honored at our weekend brunch service and also at the grocery store (as $10 off of a purchase each month). We are ramping up our prepared foods production for the grocery store and this means sandwiches, wraps, salads, and much more will be available there for a quick, grab and go lunch. We will refund folks with punch cards if none of the above options work. We are very fortunate that other pieces of the business are doing exceptionally well. Our catering business is thriving, our weekend brunch is very popular and has won three awards so far this year (Riverfront Times Best Brunch; Alive Magazine Best Vegan Brunch; and just last week the Best Brunch from the St Louis Post’s GO! Magazine), and our housemade prepared foods sales at the grocery store have doubled this year compared to last year. Our grocery store continues to do well and we are expanding our local selection even more to meet the community’s demand. We are confident that by putting our energy into these successful parts that we can make them grow even more which will lead to more hiring, more revenue for the city, and more prosperity for our neighborhood. We are proud to be part of this community and, like you, we want nothing more than to see it prosper and to be part of its continued success. We are going to sink our roots in deeper and make our contribution to this wonderful part of the city the best it can be. We have made some difficult decisions over the last year. We have questioned if our business is still valid, if we are still needed in the community. And we believe that the answer is YES. We continue to be so grateful for your support.
Posted on: Tue, 29 Jul 2014 01:05:36 +0000
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