Our Restaurant Needs Your Help!

Little Brazil opened our beautiful new location in Wheat Ridge in March of 2024 after many delays and setbacks. Our customers have supported us wonderfully since then, and they love the atmosphere and food. But we haven’t fully recovered from all our pre-opening setbacks, and we need our community’s support to ensure our long-term success.

• Little Brazil’s owners are two women, Kallen Marques, from Brazil, who created the vision for the restaurant, and Polly Furay, from Colorado, a current teacher at Wheat Ridge High School who joined her as a business partner 14 years ago. We’re not independently wealthy! In fact, we bootstrapped the restaurant from its first tiny location on Federal Blvd, to its second, slightly bigger location at Gold’s Marketplace on 26th and Kipling, where we figured out how to sustain a real restaurant for over 10 years. At that location, we made it through Covid, with the help of our community and city, state, and federal relief programs, but it was a struggle.
• When our lease expired at Gold’s, we faced a decision–stay or grow? We knew we had delicious food that people loved, but we wanted to be able to bring it to more people. We had the opportunity to build out this new location at W 38th Ave, but knew it would be a big risk–building out a restaurant is expensive. We got a loan from the SBA, a second mortgage on our house, and the landlords contributed about 1/3 of the cost of the build-out. 
• We worked diligently to open as soon as possible, but ran into dozens of setbacks. Permit delays, construction issues, and a fire delayed our opening nearly a year. We had wanted to open as soon as our prior lease ended, but we ended up having to close completely for nine months. We had to bridge the extra expenses and lack of income with our retirement savings and personal debt. We even got a second mortgage on our house. In short, we put it all on the line. 
• If you’ve been to our new restaurant, you know how beautiful it is and how delicious the food and drinks are. The live music nights are magical. Local Brazilians tell us how proud they are to have a place like this to represent Brazilian food and culture. But it’s taken an enormous amount of work, stress and sacrifice to build it.
• Our contributors can help us keep this special place around for many years to come. We are just at a critical juncture where we need to cross the gap from starting up to sustainability, and we need your help to do so. 

What We Need & What You Get

• We are looking to raise $100,000!
  • One-third will go toward working capital, which allows us to weather seasonal fluctuations in business
  • One-third will go toward marketing, which we need to increase our monthly revenue about 15%
  • One-third will pay down debt. The combination of improvements in all of these areas will allow us to reach sustainability
• You can get great perks for becoming one of our supporters!
  • $50 gets you a Little Brazil reusable tote bag and Brazilian snack pack 
  • $100 also gets you a Little Brazil Mug 
  • $250 also gets you a Little Brazil T-Shirt
  • $500 gets you all physical perks and a one-year Silver “Little Brasileiro” membership, which gives you a 15% discount card for all your meals at Little Brazil for a year. We’ll also put your name on a special plaque in our restaurant recognizing our biggest supporters.
  • $1000 gets you all physical perks and a two-year Gold “Little Brasileiro” membership, which gives you a 15% discount card for all your meals at Little Brazil for two years and an invitation to a special recognition dinner in the spring for you and a guest. We’ll also put your name on a special plaque in our restaurant recognizing our biggest supporters.
  • $2500 gets you all physical perks and makes you a Platinum “Little Brasileiro!” It gets you a 15% discount card on all your meals at Little Brazil for five years, and an invitation to a special recognition dinner in the spring for you and a guest. We’ll also put your name on a special plaque in our restaurant recognizing our biggest supporters.
  • $5000 gets you all physical perks and makes you a Premier “Little Brasileiro!” It gets you a 20% discount card on all your meals at Little Brazil for ten years, and an invitation to a special recognition dinner in the spring for you and a guest. We’ll also put your name on a special plaque in our restaurant recognizing our biggest supporters.
• Any potential benefactors who are in a position to privately refinance some of our high-interest debt rather than donate, please get in touch, as that is an alternative mechanism that would really help us out.
• If we don’t reach our entire goal, the amount we do raise will still help us increase our stability and help us grow. We’ll allocate the funds in the same 1/3 breakdown across working capital, marketing, and debt paydown.

The Impact

• Little Brazil is the kind of local, unique, community-centered restaurant that give a neighborhood its character. It brings authentically Brazilian cuisine hard to find in the greater Denver area. We have 4.5 stars on Yelp and 4.6 on Google, 
• Some people will be surprised that we are seeking donations from our community, because from the outside looking in, our business looks successful. The decor is beautiful, the food is amazing, we have those great ratings, and we have customers at every meal. However, restaurant margins are on average just 3% nationally, and if anything is off–some unexpected expense, construction in front of your building, being just 15% under capacity–a restaurant can easily lose money every month.
• This is the reality for most restaurants, which is evident from the closure of about 100 restaurants around Denver area last year. Often, their customers are surprised and sad that these great places suddenly closed. Most restaurants don’t try to raise money from crowdfunding. Entrepreneurs like us have pride in our places and associate asking for help with shame, sometimes. Most places will close before they ask. We would much rather ask than close. 
• The bottom line is that great local restaurants only become great and last a long time when they have help from a community of supporters. You can help Little Brazil remain a beloved gathering place for years to come.

Risks & Challenges

Once we raise this funding, we need to execute on our marketing plan to increase our sales by 15%. We hardly did any marketing and advertising at our old places over 12 years, and just grew by word of mouth. This new, bigger location requires us to market more like other restaurants our size. We have a plan, but there is always a risk that our plan won’t work.

• However, we have taken on so many risks and overcome so many challenges over the last 13 years, including the pandemic. We don’t quit. You can count on our persistence. 
• We’ve had initial success with new marketing channels this year, like digital advertising and direct mail. Our testing has shown us what works best (for example, we saw a 50% return on investment in sending direct mail flyers in our neighborhood!). We think our plan for increasing revenue through marketing is based on good data.

Other Ways You Can Help

We know not everyone can donate, but there are lots of things you can do to help!

• Just come to the restaurant a little more often! You know how sometimes you go to a neighborhood restaurant once in a while and you really like it, but you forget about it for a few months at a time?  You’re going to eat anyway–find some more opportunities to dine with us!
• Think of us for catering opportunities at your place of work
• Follow us on social media and like and comment on our posts for visibility
• Email our campaign link to your friends (social media sharing of crowdfunding campaigns doesn’t work all that well because of the algorithms, but one-to-one appeals do!)