I've been following the progress of upstart cheese shop Mission Cheese for some time now, mostly because the closing of Delano's has left a hole in the Mission cheese market and I need more ways to prove that I'm an upwardly-mobile caucasian.  So the other day when the shop published a headline on their blog titled “Chair Party (HOORAY!) & Budget Woes (NOOO!)”, I immediately became concerned that my dream of purchasing delicious cheese paired with a fine bottle of wine on the same block of Valencia Street as $250 custom jeans, $750 custom bicycles, $3.50 internet coffee, and gourmet children's toys was in peril.

Turns out the cheese is clever.  Rather than going down the traditional route of obtaining a bank loan or bringing on a new investor to help fill their $12k budget hole, the for-profit Mission Cheese just assumed suckers on the internet would give them money.  They slapped a page up on IndieGoGo, a service that looks almost identical to Kickstarter, and sure enough, 74 people gave them over eight grand in a few days.

Mission Cheese certainly didn't scam anyone.  They don't pretend to be a charitable business, nor do they claim they'll repay that money as Mission Street Food did.  They just want the cash so they can get their doors open and people are completely willing to give private business their money for almost nothing in return.

At first this approach bothered me since it struck me as abusing people's charity; but the more I think about it, the more I love it.  Under this model, it'd be really easy for me to open a bar in SF as I wouldn't have to worry about repaying loans or losing investor's money. I could just buy the decor from a closing Red Lobster, import it into a space in the Mission and call it “Mission Boat Club.” Serve Mission-approved beverages such as 24s of PBR, Four Loko mimosas, Cisco, Colt 45 Blast, 40s of OE, Boone's Farms, Andre on ice, and Big Daddy IPA on tap.  The grill would serve nothing but sweet potato fries, onion rings, tatter tots, seitan hot wings, deep-fried pickles, mashed potatoes, Totino's frozen pizza, and slices of ice cream cake.  And there would be a mechanical bull.  Potential investors would ask me for a business plan and I'd tell them they just read it.  They'd nod their head in approval then the internet would write me a fat check for $75k.

Who's in?