When we opened our Fresno location, we signed onto a sublease and took over the lease from the original tenants. Or, at least that’s what we thought. But—after pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into the storefront to get it up to code—and before we even opened our doors, we found out that the original tenants pocketed our money and defaulted on the lease. They weren’t paying the lease, even though we were paying them the full amount to pass on to the building owner.

For three years, we’ve been trying to resolve the matter through our lawyer. The building owner refuses to lease the storefront to us, even though we are the current tenants, even though we’ve paid every cent we’ve ever owed.

We recently received a letter from the building owner, where they threatened to forcibly remove us for nonpayment on our lease. This is the same building owner who refuses to lease to us, despite our balance being paid in full (we no longer rely on the original tenants for payment, we pay directly to the building owners).

We are a small local, woman-owned, family business that has been fighting this fight for three years—knowing that we are in the right—but our legal fees are eating us alive (no pun intended). We can’t keep up with the big corporation coming after us.

As a last-ditch effort, we created this gofundme to try and raise funds to cover our legal fees while we fight this battle in court. The owner of Crave is a single mother and this cookie company is her only source of income for her and her four children. The building owner wants to push out small, local businesses to favor faceless, corporate chains that add little value to our local community.

To date, we have spent over $60,000 in legal fees to try and stay in our storefront, and we’ll have more to pay once we go to court next year. We are grateful for every penny donated; this fundraiser will cover our legal fees to fight this battle in court.