Save Craving Coffee Tottenham

So hard to build, so easy to destroy.

Craving Coffee is an independent family owned business & licensed café in Tottenham, founded in 2014 by local residents Matt & Rachel Ho. It started on a shoestring, with life savings, personal loans and A LOT of hard work to turn it into the creative community hub it is today in the arts district of South Tottenham.

Like so many businesses around the world, the years of blood, sweat, and tears (figurative and literally), have been wiped out nearly overnight by the current Covid-19 pandemic.

There is hope...

We've had amazing people helping us navigate the situation and many lovely messages and support! It helps keep us motivated and determined to get through this.

And we are so thankful we can put each of our staff into the furlough scheme and remain united as a team.

But we need to Save Craving for our team to have a job to come back to. 

Despite our continual work to access funding through the channels intended to support businesses like ours (grants, insurance, loans), as it stands we have been able to access nothing so far, and may not be able to. 

We have had virtually no income since we were forced to close and things have reached a financial critical stage for our survival.

We are reaching out to our beloved community to help us. 

We need to raise a minimum of £25,000. This is what we will need to pay our overheads, tax and supplier debts just to survive the shutdown.

We don't want something for nothing from you, so we have put together a range of great rewards ready for when we reopen, suited for a range of budgets. We also have pledges with a charitable element, to help us help keep keyworkers caffeinated.

Please pledge what you can and choose as many options as you like. We know it's hard times for many people out there. Every little bit is hugely appreciated and goes a long way.

Thanks so much, stay safe and take care. We'll get through this together!

Love the Craving Team xx

FAQs

Why don't you get a grant from the government? I thought they were providing lots of money for small businesses, especially in the hospitality industry?

The issue is that we currently aren't eligible to apply for the small business relief grants that were announced by the government. We are one of the many in a multi-occupancy site who pay rates to landlord, not direct to the council, so we're currently not in the right scheme in the system to apply for grant. A lot of work is being done to overcome this for all affected, but there are no guarantees.

What about your business insurance or a loan?

We do have extra insurance cover that may cover us for the pandemic. However, the whole process is moving very slowly (not through lack of trying) and there are still no guarantees that we'll get any payout or if it will be enough if we do. Loans are problematic as the banks still aren't offering particularly good deals and it would be financially unwise to get into more debt whilst we have no income.

What will you do if you reach the target and other grant money insurance eventually comes through?

There are many struggling in our community and we will look at ways of how we can support them as well as a number of charitable ideas that we are working on.

What are the terms & conditions of the pledges?

• No refunds for pledges, but we are happy for them to be transferable.
• We hope the dates of events suit, but if not we'd love you to a send a friend instead.
• All items are pick up only.
• Colours & sizes of clothing / Keepcups will be given away on a first in best dressed when being picked up.
• Brunch pledges will need to book a table, date & time in advance.

What key worker sites are you willing to go to?

We are keen to help any keyworker (doctors, nurses, bus drivers, supermarket workers, delivery drivers, emergency services, waste management services etc) putting their life at risk to help keep the city running.

I want you to go to a particular key worker site. Can you go there?

As long as it's in London, they want us and they have the right tech specs to do our job, we'd be happy to!

We look forward to partying with you all at the end of this! xx