Laura & Phill from Cowboy Cafeen need your help

Hej Alle/Hello everyone,

Phill and Laura from Cowboy Cafeen and Træsko Øl are hoping you can assist us finanically. We are currently in a crisis right now, after the dissolution of our businesses. It is not in our character to ask for money from anyone. This is very difficult and embarrassing for us to ask for help like this. It is not our intention to talk badly about anyone or be negative but we need people to understand what has led to our dire finacial situation.

We were more than patient, after 15 months in business were never connected to sewer, kloak, toilets, proper electricity as we were contractually owed. Everything went from bad to worse. We chose to sacrifice our salary to keep the Cowboy Cafeen open. We each earned 60,000kr for 2022 for the whole year.

Our main goal with this Gofundme is to help us re-build our lives. A donation of 150kr, one Cowboy Cafeen pizza, would be a huge help to us. We really need help to buy a car so we have transportation so we can secure better jobs and keep our jobs, as our current car will be re-possessed by the bank and other debts. We would love to rebuild Cowboy Cafeen and make pizza and øl/beer again.

Honestly, it will take years for us to recover mentally and financially from this ordeal. If there are any additional funds it will be for us to access basic goods like shoes and clothes and possibly therapy to recover. We always prioritised customer service and providing a meeting place for the larger Herfølge community to enjoy. In retrospect, we should have taken better care of ourselves. People always tell us that we are too nice, they were right.

We have managed to secure housing for ourselves and our goats and chickens. We have relocated to Jutland, but we are in a precarious position until we secure better employment. We spent every kroner we had and borrowed money from friends and family to achieve this. We are honest hardworking people who saved our entire lives to invest in our businesses.

There are always two sides to every story and we would like to use this opportunity to explain our side of the story. We have waited until now because we had to protect ourselves. We did not feel safe anymore, we still don’t. We needed to secure housing and sell/remove all of our property. We also know there will be further repercussions of going public with this matter. Our mental health has been adversely affected due to the treatment we have received.

Out of the public eye we have been bullied, manipulated and harassed since our decision to flee. Just to be clear this has not stopped since we left. After we informed the eco-village we wanted to close down and be paid out for our investment we were told to contact them via a lawyer/advokat. We were given seven weeks' notice to vacate. We were told an offer would be placed to buy Cowboy Cafeen from us as they wanted to run it themselves. With one days notice before our departure we were told they were no longer interested in buying cowboy cafeen and that we had to empty the cafe. This was impossible and we were left no option but to leave Køleskabs and other equipment behind. When we started the Cowboy Cafeen it was a horse stable, we built the entire place up to health code ourselves and we were not paid anything for this.

We have received multiple statements requesting payment for damages and theft that are completely unfounded. When they found out we had sold our yurt they sent us a statement of charges for its approximite value. While in public they only have nice things to say about us. These people are slandering us, they are right now treating us negatively. Do not believe them when they say its all a misunderstanding or that they dont know what happened or that they wish we would come back, this is simply not true. They are still using our names and hardwork for their benefit, which is disrespectful.

Our reputation has been damaged as a result of what has been said about us since we left the eco-village in Herfølge. It was our decision to leave and move away but it was a decision we were forced to make due to emotional and financial neglect. Our businesses were undermined through a combination of gaslighting and poor management.

We are hurt, saddened, angry, confused. It has been an emotional rollercoaster. The last few months have been emotionally and psychologically traumatic. We feared for our personal saftey, accused of being thieves, we have been gaslit, bullied, and lied to time and time again. How did we end up here? We were the poster children of the eco-village, constantly praised publicly for our hard work and contributions, how great Cowboy Cafeen, Træsko øl and our home the yurt were. Everything we did at the village was done with permission, we were told everything was shared and we were all in this together.

To Clarify;

• Yes we did not pay all the rent for the Cowboy Cafeen or Træsko Øl. This is true, because we refused to. our investment, labour and contributions were not being taken into account, we could not justify paying more money to the eco-village for nothing in return. We have sought legal advise and we were right to do this as the contracts they made were predatory and one-sided.

• They have claimed in the media to have lent us 50,000kr to buy the pizza oven in Cowboy Cafeen, that is simply not true. The pizza oven was purchased and delivered without us or our company asking for it. It is only now they claim to have lent us money. We do not know what other lies and slander has been spread about us.

• We first asked for rental contracts in 2020 for the brewery and the cafe. Contracts were first presented June 2022, 7 months after we opened, all rents were backdated and we were then in debt to the eco-village and unable to complain about our lack of services (toilets, sewer, el meter, water meter) .

• It is also true that our bussiness ran out of money. Not because of lack of bussiness but because we were forced to rent toilets that should have been provided due to our contract.

• We had to spend large amounts of money paying staff to carry dishes, 50+ meters away, to be washed as we could not get a dishwasher without access to kloak/sewer. We had already invested hundreds of thousands of kroner into a bussiness that we were prevented from operating at full capacity, we decided enough was enough.

• The grounds around the Cowboy Cafeen were a disgrace. The pathways were dug up all the time, mud everywhere, huge holes dug and left open all around, it was dangerous for our guests, our staff and ourselves. We could not cope with the level of disrespect and disregard they had for us.

• We were bullied and gossiped about by the kitchen staff at the eco-village, accused of stealing. Then after some time they refused to place our food ingreident orders in the coolroom leading to spoiled goods. which was in violation of our agreement.

• We were given ‘’gifts’’ that we were later charged money for or accused of stealing.

• We have never borrowed or accepted any money from the eco-village.

• Our labour for the construction of the Brewery and Cafe were not voluntary or done out of charity. There was always an understanding we would be renumerated for our efforts.

• We are permanent residents of Denmark of our own accord we did not need help from anyone to live here.

• We were the only people living and working at the eco-village who were expected to pay for everything ourselves.

• We did not receive a salary from the eco-village. Anyone who contributed to the building up of the eco-village in any way got paid. We, Laura and Phill were not paid anything despite agreements to be paid out for our investment if we decided to leave.

We were forced to close down our businesses due to problems out side of our control. In 15 months of operation we were denied basic services (sewer, electricity, toilets) that we were contractually owed in our rental agreement.

• Kloak/Sewer was never connected despite 15 months of dangerous trenches dug around the Cowboy Cafeen, even though we were charged for it.

• We invested 10’s of thousands of kroner on a toiletvogn/toilet wagon that was never connected. However, it was connected days after we were forced to close and is now being used by the eco-village.

• There were no el/electricty vand/water meters connected to Cowboy Cafeen so we could not be charged correctly for electricity or water.

• The exterior shell of the brewery building was agreed to be paid for and to be the responsibility to fix, restore and maintain by the owner. Nothing was built, painted or upkept by the owner. The roof leaked and was never fixed despite promises to fix things. We were ignored, or told to do the work ourselves, whenever we asked them to do anything.

Our Story in Denmark started 7 years ago. When we moved here from Australia, with no idea what to expect. We love Denmark and we feel at home here. We have met so many beautiful people and friends. But our experiences in the last few months have hurt us terribly.

We began our journey at the eco-village in 2019 when we moved into the property and built our own home - the yurt (with full support of the eco-village). We decided to make a huge leap and invest our life savings into starting our dream of owning our own Microbrewery and Bar, and to be part of building up an eco-village. To be part of a community that was interested in doing things differently and putting the planet first. But there was a significant lack of direction and planning.

There was a derelict barn at the eco-village, we made an agreement with them to use it as a microbrewery. We built the brewery for two years, we did most of the construction ourselves as well as paying professional tradesmen to do the vvs/plumbing, el/electricity, carpentry. We were told that there was no money to renovate the brewery building so we would have to pay for it ourselves. If we did the work we would be compensated with cheap rent.

We were later told that we could not have cheap rent as agreed. Instead, we were offered to be paid for the restoration and improvements made to 1. the Brewery building and 2.The Cowboy Cafeen building. We were also told to keep a record of our hours of work to be paid also. We asked for contracts to be written that detailed what our rents would be and what we were to be paid for our work and investment in the buildings. This was never provided despite meeting after meeting, request after request.

Looking back now we were young and naive. We trusted the wrong people, which led to us making some very poor business decisions. All of the agreements we had were verbal and any paper contracts we were given denied us all of our contributions. We invested hundreds of thousands of kroner restoring buildings we were not compensated for. All additional investments we made in brewery equipment, cafe equipment, business operating costs, overheads, accounting etc was our risk as business owners. we accepted that risk and we accept our losses concerning those investments.

We succeeded in delivering the highest quality pizza and beer, but at huge emotional and financial cost. We made incredible sacrifices over the last few years. we have not been able to travel to our home countries to see family as frequently as we wanted or needed to, we spent our own life savings on fixing and renovating buildings we were later charged full rent on. We made these sacrifices in the hopes our hard work would pay off, and we would be valued members of the Eco-village. what kept us going for so long was our beautiful guests, all your smiling faces, hygge and fun times. The truth behind the scenes was not one of smiling faces however, it was tears, stress and depression.

Upon us exiting the eco-village, we were told that our yurt was an illegal structure and that they were going to demolish it and charge us for the cleanup and removal. This is strange considering we built it with their support and approval. Over the 3.5 years our yurt was there it was used by the eco-village as an advertisement and an attraction. We opened our private home to journalists, magazines, and tour groups. Our private home was treated like a tourist attraction and an asset to attract attention/interest in the project. We were more than happy to do this for the greater good.

In conclusion, we were used and exploited. We spent every waking moment for the last 4 years pouring our hearts, souls and life savings into a project we believed in. That we have not and will not benefit from. We directly contributed to the success and development of the eco-village, we gave our bread recipes to the gårdbutik, we baked pizzas at 1 am for events, washed dishes, drove pigs and lambs to the slagter, so many things. We were a part of every aspect of that place. Despite years of empty promises we were offered nothing for our investments and hard work.

We want to thank all the people who reached out to us in love, support, acts of kindness and gifts over the last few months. The people who offered us a place for us and our goats to live, you know who you are, it meant so much to us. Thank you to our dear friends who helped us with the packing up and moving the contents of the Brewery and Cafe.

Tusinde tak for reading our story.

Phill and Laura