Gary Usher to launch £100k crowdfund for Kala
The chef took to Twitter to announce he will launch a Kickstarter campaign towards the project, his sixth restaurant, on 11 March at 9pm.
Usher will need to raise the funds in one week, or Kala will not open.
In a video posted on Twitter, Usher says: “We fucked up financing this restaurant and I’ve underestimated it completely. There’s certain people asking me how I’ve fucked it up so bad and it’s quite a simple answer, the restaurants don’t make a lot of money, they make enough to stay afloat.
“We’re not backed by [venture capital] down in London that will throw money at us. We’re not PizzaExpress, we’re not Bella Italia, and we don’t have this working capital to put in. So we got stuck because we open restaurants on a fucking budget.
“We love what we do and I love the restaurants. I still want to expand, even though there isn’t money to expand we’re just trying the best way that we can.”
Usher opened his first restaurant Sticky Walnut in Chester in 2011 and has since crowdfunded over £400,000 towards the launch of Hispi in Chorlton, Burnt Truffle in Heswall, Wreckfish in Liverpool and Pinion in Prescot.
Both Hispi and Wreckfish appeared in Restaurant magazines' top 100 places to eat in the UK last year, ranking 46 and 19 respectively.
