How can online fund-raising to run cafes and restaurants go further?

On the afternoon of December 16, at a corner of Literature Hall Road in Chaoyang District, Beijing, Xiao Song, a doctoral student at Peking University, walked down the stairs beside the sidewalk, entered a cafe in a semi-basement, and began to take care of the business. on the inconspicuous green sign at the entrance of the cafe, it says "Cafe for many people". This is a cafe that Xiao Song, along with 79 other netizens, raised money and managed by many people. Despite its unimpressive appearance and hidden location, the cafe is already well-known online.

The dream shines into reality from the Internet

The birth of "Cafe for many people" comes from a brilliant idea of a young civil servant who sponsored the mosquito er Niu (net name).

On January 7 this year, mosquito er Niu posted a post entitled "Let's open a coffee shop with 2000 yuan" on Douban's "eat, drink and play in Beijing" group. In this post, the mosquito girl wrote: every day when I sit in the office with my back to the sun facing the computer, I always want to serve a cup of coffee in the face of the sun. Furthermore, I extravagantly thought: I want to open a coffee shop. All the friends who want to open a coffee shop like me can't afford hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars, they can't quit their jobs and start a shop, and they can't take that kind of risk. Let's do a cafe together, use a little bit of our money a little bit of time, put together a lot of money, a lot of time. The name is the resounding "Cafe for many people".

"as soon as this post was posted, there were different voices, but then it did attract a lot of netizens who also share the dream of a cafe, including me." Xiao Song introduced to the reporter.

After several offline communication preparatory meetings, these dreamy netizens gradually established a sense of trust in each other, and finally reached an agreement on a variety of ideas. After several twists and turns, 80 netizens from all sides and various professions finally raised 410000 yuan. A simple idyllic decoration of "Cafe for many people" has finally turned from a dream to a reality.

The cafe belongs to "every" shareholder

"the focus of this cafe is to be opened by'a lot of people', which is a tenet established by Mosquito Erniu when recruiting like-minded people.

For this reason, Mosquito Erniu stipulated from the very beginning that those who are willing to participate in this matter should contribute at least 2000 yuan to a maximum of 20, 000 yuan, so as to ensure that there are no absolute or even relative controlling shareholders in the whole cafe. The coffee shop really becomes the coffee shop of "every" shareholder.

According to Xiao Song, after recruiting the first batch of 50 shareholders to raise more than 200,000 yuan, Mosquito Erniu held a shareholders' meeting to elect a five-member board of directors. Through independent registration and platform speeches, all shareholders finally elected five directors in accordance with the right of one vote for every 2000 yuan contributed. Mosquito er Niu was elected chairman with the first vote, and Xiao Song was elected with the second vote; at the same time, two other shareholders were elected as supervisors.

Under the choice of most shareholders, it was decided that the cafe began to prepare first and raise funds again at the same time, which soon attracted 30 shareholders. The oldest was 39 years old, and the youngest was only in the third year of senior high school. The total amount of financing increased to 410000 yuan. Xiao Song, who originally contributed 4000 yuan, added almost all his savings of 10, 000 yuan in that financing.

As a joint stock limited company must have a minimum registered capital of 5 million yuan, our Cafe finally chose to register as a limited liability company. However, since the limited liability company has no more than 50 shareholders, Beijing many people Culture Co., Ltd., which is responsible for running the cafe, has only 22 investors on its business license. more shareholders become "virtual shareholders" in the form of "holding on behalf".

As chairman of the board, Mosquito Erniu also plays the role of CEO. In order to make "Cafe for a lot of people" really become a coffee shop with a lot of people involved, Mosquito er Niu has organized many working groups, putting different shareholders in charge of different jobs such as coffee craftsmanship, such as decoration, such as Weibo, such as forum management.

China Coffee Trading Network: www.gafei.com