Ludlow Street music club Cake Shop has had a few brushes with death in recent years. Now the owners are looking for another infusion of capital. Here’s an email message sent to supporters of the LES venue a short time ago:
Cake Shop has been bringing the best emerging bands to New York City for 10 years in our beloved home on Ludlow Street. With the recent closing of our friends Glasslands, Death By Audio, 285 Kent and the Living Room, we feel it is our mission to keep the New York tradition of well-curated live rock music going strong.
However, we are really feeling the pressure of keeping our doors open. We know there is so much more we could do to make more money, and finally have a little breathing room to grow: but it always comes down to capital and cash flow. People who know us, realize how passionate we are, and how hard we work to keep Cake Shop open. Andy books all the great bands 7 days a week (that is roughly 1460 bands a year for your viewing/listening pleasure). In addition, he is the creative director, and works the venue door on a regular basis. Nick does all the daily business, ordering, hiring, bill payment, etc, and he works behind the bar in the venue to make sure all the wonderful talent and customers are taken care of properly.
The last two years have been a well-documented struggle. If it wasn’t for the amazing patrons and bands who supported us through crowd funding site PledgeMusic.com, we would have closed in 2012. Now we are starting to fall behind in rent and other bills as we enter the slow 1st Quarter of cold winter months.
We are not looking for a handout, but we need a like-minded investor to come in and buy 25% to 40% of Cake Shop. Now is your chance to be a part of a special NYC venue/bar/cafe/record store, and save a well-curated stage for talented emerging artist (which include comedians and authors). In addition to increasing sales, we have always wanted to grow Cake Shop into other areas of music discovery, but all these things take money.
We would use the investment money to directly increase revenue so we can be a viable, profitable long term business with growth potential. In addition to catching up with our bills and consolidating back debt, we would use the investment capital to renovate our tired space a bit, we also need to develop our daytime and late night business (which should include some more food options) as we are open from 9AM to 4AM seven days a week. We know our web-site is horrible, and we always wanted to develop more of a portal for the emerging talent we discover. We really would like to sell a line of t-shirts from up & coming designers and artists we love. Cape Shok Records was always meant to be an incubator for hand picked artists; to put out vinyl records that the bands could sell on tour, or do split 7 inches with good souls in other global cities. We would love to book a Cake Shop Stage at music festivals. Heck, we could even start baking our own cakes! If we are able to come out of this, we would also love to open Cake Shops in other cities like LA or Glasgow.
We are optimistic, but we need your help to spread the word. Please help get this info out there to as many people as possible. And we would really appreciate it if you passed on the email below to anyone you think might be in a position to invest in Cake Shop. We can hold on for a few more weeks, but that’s about it without a significant partner.
For more info and quick response for serious investors/partners (minimum investment 150k) please e-mail:
CakeShopInvestor@gmail.comTell us how you think Cake Shop should increase revenue and grow with our new partner:
And for Press Inquiries:
CakeShopForever@gmail.comLove you all, you are the best,
Cake Shop
As noted above, Cake Shop ran a successful crowd funding campaign three years ago, raising the necessary funds to keep the place going.
what happened to the previous investors and the last fund raise? are they just going to get diluted now… or did they get any kind of dividend along the way. interesting…
There were no “investors” in the last fund raise. Just donors/customers.
The SEC is still in the process of finalizing its equity crowdfunding rules under the 2012 JOBS Act, so equity crowdfunding remains illegal in New York.