Street Feast owner London Union launches £3.5m crowdfunding campaign
The company, which launched in June with the aim of 'changing the capital's food landscape forever', is giving away a 10 per cent stake in the business for £3.5m and will make investors 'Union Members' with additional benefits including a seat on the advisory board, free access to events and the chance to review a restaurant with Giles Coren or Tom Parker-Bowles.
Leon co-founder Henry Dimbleby, who founded London Union with Street Feast's Jonathan Downey, said they'd taken the decision to start a crowdfunding campaign on Seedrs to speed up their plans for a permanent street food market in central London.
He said: “Although only five months old, London Union is already very profitable. This profitability enables us to open commercially-sustainable markets that bring communities together, create employment and provide opportunities for new food entrepreneurs to establish themselves without requiring large amounts of capital. We are doing this fundraising so we can move fast to open the world-class, permanent street food market that London deserves."
A number of restaurateurs and chefs, including Russell Norman and Richard Beatty of the Polpo Group, the Zetter Group's Mark Sainsbury, Jamie Oliver and Yotam Ottolenghi have already invested in the company which generated £3.5m of revenue and £1.5m of market EBITDA over five months this spring and summer at its street food markets in Shoreditch, Dalston, Canada Water and Lewisham.
Downey said: “We founded London Union to transform London’s food landscape, turning underused and derelict corners of the city into vibrant street food markets. In Lewisham, for example, we transformed Model Market – an abandoned 1950s market – into one of south east London’s most popular weekend destinations, with around 4,000 visitors each week.”
