Chefs Aaron Webster and Remi Williams, the founders of London restaurant Smoke & Salt, are crowdfunding with the hopes of opening their first permanent bricks and mortar site.
Smoke & Salt first opened its doors in 2017 and currently resides in a tiny shipping container at Pop Brixton, a permanent space which houses a number of temporary street food residencies. Now, the chef pair behind the venture want to open their first permanent location, and need £140,000 to do it.
The crowdfund campaign is being run in conjunction with the Seedrs platform and goes live from today (Monday 14 October). The campaign will last for 40 days, in which time Webster and Williams hope to raise enough to fund their dream restaurant.
Smoke & Salt is a small plates affair which gets its name from the founders’ particular interest in smoking, curing, brining and fermenting. The restaurant has been well received by critics and the general public since its debut – we bestowed Smoke & Salt with one of our Silver Awards, praising the “innovative and astonishingly delicious small plates” on offer.
Fans of the restaurant who choose to invest in the restaurant’s first permanent location will receive founder perks, such as your name on the restaurant's 'founders wall' or a tote bag, all the way up to exclusive rewards such as a self-published cookbook full of their recipes or a hamper of house-made goodies, while those pledging £5,000 and above will receive a friends and family discount for life.
In recent years, crowdfunding has become a viable way of realising restaurateurs’ dreams, as securing large business loans from banks becomes more difficult. Perhaps the most famous example of this is Manchester-based chef Gary Usher, who has used crowdfunding to launch several of his restaurants and raised £50,000 for his restaurant Pinion in less than one hour.
Pop Brixton first opened in May 2015 and has played host to several pop up restaurants and street food concepts that have gone on to become big success stories. Indian small plates restaurant Kricket started out life at Pop, before going on to open three permanent sites across the capital in Soho, Brixton and White City, while chef Zoe Adjonyoh, who founded Zoe’s Ghana Kitchen at Pop, has gone on to publish a successful cookbook.
To invest in Smoke & Salt, visit their crowdfunding page.
Want to know more about Brixton’s dining scene? Check out our pick of the best restaurants in Brixton.
Featured Image: Tom Hampson Photography