Dear Local Harvesters, A couple of days ago we were talking about the best ways (there arent any) to close our businesses and contemplating the fallout that would ensue. The lost jobs (around 50), the lost sales for our vendors, the hole that would be on Morgan Ford and in the Tower Grove neighborhood, and the repercussions in our personal lives. Today we can contemplate a future for Local Harvest. We still have a way to go, but we feel like we have a chance now. We can see bright rays of hope. When we talk about our future, we need to include you all since you all are putting your faith in us. We will be open with you about our plans and how we will make ourselves strong again. First, we have some debts that we need to take care of. A large amount of the money will go to these, roughly 70%. Some of the debts are to vendors and others include tax payments - when businesses start to decline, taxes can be one of the things that finishes them. We will be able to settle ours and that will instantly put us in a stronger position by eliminating the large amounts of penalties and fees we have been paying. We will use a portion of the money to restock our grocery store. Its inventory has declined over the last several months as were sure youve noticed. With a fuller store, we will be able to serve the community better and increase our sales. This will strengthen us, as well. After we have stabilized things, we will continue our work to bring an equity partner into the business to further boost our organization and help us have the one thing we have always lacked: operating capital. (We will, in the short-term, hold some of the above funds back for operating capital until we have brought in an equity partner.) We have other things we have been working on already to help strengthen the businesses, like the new concept at our Tower Grove cafe, LHC. We are also expanding our prepared and packaged foods and we have our best year of catering lined up in 2014. Our grocery store has always done well and with less debt, more inventory, and expanded prepared foods, we see a very good year ahead for it. This will help us prepare for the gift certificates that will be used starting in 2015. We expect the amount of certificates that are used each month to be equal to or less than the amount we have been paying toward debts over the last several months. This tells us that if we have a good year and go into it in a strong position, it will have a negligible effect. It is encouraging to be able to outline how we would manage the money that is being raised right now. We still have a way to go, but we are hopeful. We have been overwhelmed by the groundswell of support from this wonderful community. Thank you all.
Posted on: Thu, 30 Jan 2014 04:56:11 +0000