Save Wayward Brews
Donation protected
We'll try to make this short and sweet, but the truth is... it's really not.
Wayward Brews is in trouble. We've overcome so many hurdles since we started this business. We've finally come to a hurdle that we just can't overcome on our own.
We started Wayward Brews out of combined passions and shared dreams. We poured our hearts, souls...and lots of money into getting it up and running.
At Wayward Brews, we quickly became a lot of people's favorite go-to place for work or relaxation. We have grown to love so many of the folks that come through our doors. Most of our customers are more like family to us now. That's why we feel the need to be honest.
The week of Thanksgiving we received a call from our lease company. Apparently, they had tried to send an invoice to us from back in SEPTEMBER. After months of no response, they ended up calling to follow up on the invoice and they found out they put the wrong address on the package. They apologized, but then proceeded to instruct us that they needed this invoice paid IMMEDIATELY, despite the acknowledged error. This was over $6,000 in property maintenance fees, insurance, and other costs associated with our location from several months. Since we had not received the original invoice, the amounts added up quickly.
We are a small, family owned business. We are not wealthy and we do not make any profit from Wayward Brews, despite what a lot of people think. Wayward Brews takes care of itself, essentially, in all of its expenses, inventory, payroll, etc. To say that we did not have this type of money sitting around to send overnight is quite an understatement.
Our next step, we started attempting to contact someone through the lease company that we could talk to. We finally were directed to the appropriate person, and left a message. We left another message. Another.
By the time we finally received a phone call back from them, they had added on even more fees to the $6000 such as $50 a day LATE FEES from the start of the original invoice. A DAY! This brought the balance to over $14,000 by the time we were actually able to get in contact with someone.
While we are not arguing our responsibility to pay for our original expenses, we simply could not scrape that much money up in such a short amount of time. The best that the lease company is willing to do for us is to give us until January 15th to pay our remaining balance.
Did we get in a little over our heads when we started the business? Well yeah... it was a risk that we were willing to take.
Did we make mistakes along the way? Oh yeah... but that's part of the learning process.
Did we ever expect to get caught in a situation like this? No. Never.
We didn't take out any business loans to start our business. We used our hard-earned savings and what little credit we already had. We pooled all of our resources to get Wayward Brews opened....and now we're tapped out.
We had admitted defeat and decided that we would end up closing the doors. We just wanted to break it to a few of our 'family regulars' before making the general announcement.
With enough tears to fill an Olympic-sized pool, we started telling some of our folks.
It didn't take long before our tears of embarrassment, hurt, anger, and pain turned into appreciation and inspiration when our most loved customers refused to give up on Wayward Brews.
We started having some of our regulars offer help. (And threats, should we close) It was amazing how in just one evening, people started pledging and promising money to the business in order to keep it open.
With this new boost of hope, we eventually agreed to start a GoFundMe page.
We know there will be those that will laugh at our situation. There will be a lot of "I told you, you wouldn't make it!"
Where our pride would normally keep us from ever even thinking of asking for help, especially in this fashion, our passion for our business surpasses any of our hesitations.
If we can't come up with the overdue amounts, we will face EVICTION.
We believe in Wayward Brews.
We hope you can too.
Wayward Brews is in trouble. We've overcome so many hurdles since we started this business. We've finally come to a hurdle that we just can't overcome on our own.
We started Wayward Brews out of combined passions and shared dreams. We poured our hearts, souls...and lots of money into getting it up and running.
At Wayward Brews, we quickly became a lot of people's favorite go-to place for work or relaxation. We have grown to love so many of the folks that come through our doors. Most of our customers are more like family to us now. That's why we feel the need to be honest.
The week of Thanksgiving we received a call from our lease company. Apparently, they had tried to send an invoice to us from back in SEPTEMBER. After months of no response, they ended up calling to follow up on the invoice and they found out they put the wrong address on the package. They apologized, but then proceeded to instruct us that they needed this invoice paid IMMEDIATELY, despite the acknowledged error. This was over $6,000 in property maintenance fees, insurance, and other costs associated with our location from several months. Since we had not received the original invoice, the amounts added up quickly.
We are a small, family owned business. We are not wealthy and we do not make any profit from Wayward Brews, despite what a lot of people think. Wayward Brews takes care of itself, essentially, in all of its expenses, inventory, payroll, etc. To say that we did not have this type of money sitting around to send overnight is quite an understatement.
Our next step, we started attempting to contact someone through the lease company that we could talk to. We finally were directed to the appropriate person, and left a message. We left another message. Another.
By the time we finally received a phone call back from them, they had added on even more fees to the $6000 such as $50 a day LATE FEES from the start of the original invoice. A DAY! This brought the balance to over $14,000 by the time we were actually able to get in contact with someone.
While we are not arguing our responsibility to pay for our original expenses, we simply could not scrape that much money up in such a short amount of time. The best that the lease company is willing to do for us is to give us until January 15th to pay our remaining balance.
Did we get in a little over our heads when we started the business? Well yeah... it was a risk that we were willing to take.
Did we make mistakes along the way? Oh yeah... but that's part of the learning process.
Did we ever expect to get caught in a situation like this? No. Never.
We didn't take out any business loans to start our business. We used our hard-earned savings and what little credit we already had. We pooled all of our resources to get Wayward Brews opened....and now we're tapped out.
We had admitted defeat and decided that we would end up closing the doors. We just wanted to break it to a few of our 'family regulars' before making the general announcement.
With enough tears to fill an Olympic-sized pool, we started telling some of our folks.
It didn't take long before our tears of embarrassment, hurt, anger, and pain turned into appreciation and inspiration when our most loved customers refused to give up on Wayward Brews.
We started having some of our regulars offer help. (And threats, should we close) It was amazing how in just one evening, people started pledging and promising money to the business in order to keep it open.
With this new boost of hope, we eventually agreed to start a GoFundMe page.
We know there will be those that will laugh at our situation. There will be a lot of "I told you, you wouldn't make it!"
Where our pride would normally keep us from ever even thinking of asking for help, especially in this fashion, our passion for our business surpasses any of our hesitations.
If we can't come up with the overdue amounts, we will face EVICTION.
We believe in Wayward Brews.
We hope you can too.
Organiser
Amanda Leonard
Organiser
Winston-Salem, NC