by smallfoodbiz on August 15, 2013

Kickstarter and Indiegogo may be the big names in crowdfunding, but as more and more entrepreneurs turn to “the crowd” to raise the capital necessary to start and grow their businesses, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that several food-specific crowdfunding sites have popped up.  While many food projects have been funded through Kickstarter and Indiegogo, those sites tend to skew towards technology and film/the arts.  The idea with these new food sites is to try and make it easy for food entrepreneurs and ‘donors’ who are interested in investing in food businesses to find one another.  Let’s take a look at 3 of these new sites:

•    Food Start was originally created to help restaurants and food trucks raise but have since added categories for almost every food category including cafes, bakeries, and packaged food products.

•    Foodie Crowd Funding is focused on helping small and medium sized food businesses take their businesses to the next level.

•   Fun-dit is solely focused on the mobile food industry so if you’re looking to get a food truck or cart up and running this might be the place to get rolling.

If you determine that you want to raise money via crowd funding, do your own due diligence to determine which company (including Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and others not mentioned here) are the best platform for you.  Take a look at past projects and see how many funded.  Ideally the site you choose will not only have a large donor base but will also give our project a chance to get seen and not get lost in the fray.  For more information about how to create a successful crowd funding campaign, check out this Small Food Business interview with Intrigue Chocolate where they talked about the very strategic steps they took to make sure that they raised the nearly $25,000 necessary for new packaging.  It’s also worthwhile reading this article about the dark side of crowd funding before you jump in and start a campaign.

Article was originally published in http://smallfoodbiz.com/2013/08/15/food-focused-crowdfunding-sites/#more-3839