Your Local American cafe & bar - £10k for 10 years

Aim

Pickle & Rye is turning 10. Celebrate with us by helping us expand! We want to create the best neighbourhood cafe & bar in East Sheen.

Pickle & Rye is built around community, good American food, and a fun and welcoming experience. We are ready to expand and we need your help.

Cheers to 10 years!

This year will mark Pickle & Rye's 10th official birthday. What better way to celebrate than with this wonderful new start. Here's the kicker; we need your help! Please consider helping us to bring our new location to life, so we can keep serving you the food of our hearts song - the best American food this side of the Atlantic!

What we've learned through the pandemic

We are incredibly fortunate to have never closed our doors during this crazy time, thanks to the steadfast support of our amazing customers. The support has been humbling and so dearly appreciated. In the face of life's obstacles, and with diligence to protect the health and safety of our staff and customers, we learned to adapt and adjust - turning into a takeaway or delivery service only, oftentimes delivered by way of our trusty community-lent bicycles. It worked. We stayed afloat and still had the opportunity to connect with our community by showing up on their doorstep with dinner in hand. Seeing people smile as we handed over their orders has been a highlight. We miss people so much!

Pre-Covid, we had been deep into planning for a move to another premises. This, along with, um, everything was put on hold as we grappled with just getting through the day-to-day. Though we are not yet through the thick of it, as vaccines start to roll out and crocuses start to peep through the cold ground, it's time to begin to dream and plan once again.

MOVING ON UP!

Our current restaurant, though well-loved, just doesn't afford us the location or space we need to bring our next dream to life. So, after careful consideration, it's time to say 'thank you, next'. We've signed on the dotted line and will soon be moving to a local premise on the high street in East Sheen. It's big enough for outdoor seating with a much wider pavement, a bar, comfy booths, and a place to watch the big game that won't conflict with our family-friendly dining room. Exciting times lie ahead for Pickle & Rye!

Here's how you can help!

This is where you come in and why we are asking for some help. We've chosen to do this on our own, no investors or otherwise, because we think over the last ten years we've worked to create a community that extends beyond our doors. We want to see this through with the same vision that led us to create Pickle & Rye in the first place: a community-based independent spot that focuses on family, food and fun.

The New Digs

Teamwork makes the dream work, as they say. All money contributed from this crowdfunding campaign will be spent working to renovate our new location and bring this dream to life, so we can invite you inside to share it with us. 

Think: 

• Roomy, American-style booths and tables to gather around for birthday celebrations of milkshakes and burgers, blue plate specials when you're too tired to make dinner on Wednesday night, or a Sunday morning treat of pancakes and eggs. 
• A Top-Notch Kitchen: fully outfitted kitchen with an open pass to see Alex and his team in action!
• Outdoor seating on wide pavement for relaxing and enjoying plates full of bbq ribs and cold margaritas all summer long
• A bar to sit at, sip a local beer, devour chicken wings and watch some beloved American sports or chat with your neighbourhood pals
• All under one roof 

Support us... Get stuff!

There are loads of whistle-whetting rewards to choose from. Each of them comes with a handwritten thank you note, just like Mom taught us to do, and your name listed on our website. Contributions come in a wide range - every little bit helps! Rewards include incentives like an invitation to a food-flowing supper club, having a booth or sandwich named after you, or a coffee on us each month for a year. We are grateful for each and every contribution!

More about US. Americans in London.

Meet our founders. Husband and wife team Alex and Val met each other by chance, in an unfamiliar environment (two Americans living and travelling in the UK). Their belief is that good food is closely connected to family, the comforts of home, travel, and adventure. In an attempt to marry these values, and shortly before marrying each other, Pickle & Rye, a small home-style American sandwich shop set in East Sheen, London was born.

Humble beginnings

In 2010 in its early days, before there was such a widespread American influence in London, Pickle & Rye was a 6 seater sandwich shop, showcasing the humble sarnie and showing local residents it could be so much more than a piece of rubbery ham slapped in between two slices of lacklustre industrial-made bread.

As local families started to pile into Pickle & Rye’s cosy, comforting arms in search of truly satisfying sandwiches, Val and Alex knew it was time to expand.

In October of 2013 Pickle moved from its first brick and mortar sandwich shop location to a bigger space, just over the road. We flung open our doors for brunch, and lunch: from rowers carbing up after a long Saturday training, to friends catching up over bloody marys and group birthday parties, the restaurant was bustling! Dinner service came a few years later, picking up momentum as it went. All the while we've kept our mission close to our hearts; to provide locals with a warm and welcoming American experience, no gimmicks or formal attire required. 

We believe our food fosters a sense of family. It's made from wholesome, real ingredients, loved and made by real people (no influencers or Instagram fads here, thankyouverymuch). Think blueberry pancakes and eggs Benedict, burgers, door wedge-sized sandwiches, seasonal pies and milkshakes.

This move will also help us to eventually be able to welcome guests to dine in safely. With access to outdoor seating and/or a smaller percentage of occupancy inside - depending on how things go - we see this as a way of embracing the times and adapting the business to adjust whilst still prioritising the health and safety of our staff and customers. It's something we haven't been able to do in our current location due to space restraints, which is why we adapted our current location to take-away only.

This project successfully funded on 28th April 2021