Click here for updated charts of the performance and breakdown of our community investment campaign.

We recently called for help to seize a $20,000 Share-for-Share Match opportunity in which every share purchased by a member of the public would be matched by an investor until we reached a total of $20,000. As momentum from the response to our call began to build the investor increased her match to $25,000.

But even the match increase couldn’t begin to, well, match the incredible response we received from people wanting to help us accelerate our community investment campaign. We raised $110,000 from 48 investors during the match period – over 4 times the match amount! There was such a tremendous rush of people on the last day of the match that our website crashed from all of the traffic.

Here’s a diagram showing the extraordinary response we got from this call:

This shows the power of small investors and of a crowd of like-minded and passionate people rallying together. The vast majority of people who have become Founding Shareholders are working class and middle class individuals and families. Consider the following:

-82% of our shareholders are unaccredited (< $2M in net worth and < $200K in annual income).
-49% of our shareholders invested the minimum required amount of $1,000.
-93% of our shareholders invested $5,000 or less.

Here’s a breakdown of the people who have invested so far by the amounts that they invested:

In addition to showing the power of small investors and how they’re the backbone of this campaign, this recent surge shows the power of LOCAL investing. Here’s a diagram showing where our Founding Shareholders live:

As you can see, 65% of our new shareholders live in Oakland and Berkeley and 98% live in the San Francisco Bay Area. A growing number of people from the local area are reaching out to us who, as was stated in a recent article  in the San Francisco Chronicle, “want to put their money toward building a better community”.

We’re thrilled about this rush of small investors. And we know we still have a long way to go to reach our goal of $1M. We’re hopeful that this recent wave is just the beginning of a greater momentum that it will propel us into the next phase of the project — securing a loan and a lease and preparing to break ground.

If you missed the opportunity to respond to the recent match please don’t wait any longer to take action. The sooner you join us as a Founding Shareholder the sooner we’ll be able to switch from selling company stock to stocking and selling groceries!