Ever been so frustrated that you can’t find a decent pie that you decided to start selling your own? That’s what Martin Dewey did, the creator of East London-based Square Pie, and it seems to have paid off. His business started from a small stall in Spitalfields Market, which opened in November 2001 and sold a grand total of seven pies on their first day of trading. Now, Square Pie has six London outlets, with a seventh opening in Birmingham later this year, has won several food awards, and supplies to Twickenham Stadium, Glastonbury and Ocado. Dewey is now hoping to raise £750,000 for Square Pie on crowdfunding platform Crowdcube in order to open further restaurants, and invest in PR and marketing to grow awareness of the brand. The Square Pie Bond offers an 8% interest rate for an initial investment of £500 or more, over the course of four years. The original investment will be returned when the bond matures. The company is still run by Dewey and his wife, Lucy. The husband and wife team is backed up by Chief Executive Nabil Subuh, who joined in January 2015 after 25 years in hospitality, and Finance Director Robert Scott, who was formerly CFO at Thomson’s Online. In 2014, Square Pie’s turnover was £2.6 million, with company sales up 34% this financial year. Whilst profits have been impacted recently due to the initial costs of opening several venues, the financial projections look solid. If this opportunity is something that interests you, head over to Crowdcube.com for further information on how to get involved.

Metlife UK, the insurance and investment giant, has announced that it is working with non-profit crowdfunding platform Kiva. Their new initiative, which is open to employees across Europe, Middle East and Africa, allows Metlife staff to direct a loan as small as £16 to a range of projects including businesses and entrepreneurs, and people funding education. It has been pioneered by Metlife’s charity, the Metlife Foundation, which is committed to building financial inclusion. Kiva is a microfinance crowdfunding platform that aims to tackle poverty and create opportunities for those in countries where the necessary loans are hard to come by. Kiva arranges loans for those in need, which are then distributed through microfinance institutions in the borrower’s country with a repayment rate of 98 per cent.

Premal Shah, Kiva’s president and co-founder said: “Metlife was founded on a simple and powerful insight, that everyone needs access to the right financial tools to pursue more from life.

“We are proud to be a part of Metlife’s efforts toward that vision. Through this partnership, they are backing the dreams of thousands of entrepreneurs around the world, expanding financial access and empowering their employees to take part directly in that mission.”

Many financial institutions have similar charitable schemes, such as Deutsche Bank’s Small Grants Fund, however Metlife is the first to undertake one through crowdfunding.  

When Hertfordshire based Red Squirrel Brewery decided to look for further investment in its craft beer brewing company, there was one clear way to go; like many other small businesses, crowdfunding was the most viable option. They are forecasted to grow by over 111% this financial year, hitting revenues of around £1 million. With a bit of investment from the public, they are hoping to further expand their Brewery Shop & Tasting Bar concept targeting in the main provincial towns in the South East as well opening its first Microbrew Bar in Europe. However, Red Squirrel are not the first brewing company to see crowdfunding as a viable alternative form of finance. They are following in the footsteps of successful crowdfunders BrewDog, who launched Britain’s biggest crowdfunding project ever in April, hoping to raise £25m. James Watt, BrewDog’s co-founder, said: “We are not the Rockefellers. We are Guy Fawkes. This is about changing small business finance for ever. “By making profit king, the financial institutions of the City gave rise to the bastardisation and commoditisation of beer. We are burning the established system down to the ground and forging a new future for business from the flames.” However interestingly, instead of using a traditional crowdfunding platform such as Crowdcube, they chose to launch their own site, “Equity for Punks”. Similarly, the UK’s fastest growing craft beer club, Beer52, has raised £100k from the crowd to grow their online community to 10,000 members in 2014. Beer52 is an early stage startup, launched just three months ago, and is already the UK’s largest and fastest growing craft beer club with more than 2,500 paying subscribers – for £24 a month they send you a mixed case of eight craft beers. According to the Campaign for Real Ale, the number of breweries in Britain in 2014 hit a 70-year high of 1,147 as growth in micro-breweries continues apace. Living in London, it’s increasingly clear that independent breweries are on the rise; in South London, I live opposite two small breweries who have opened in the last few years. It appears that, instead of loans from banks, crowdfunding from their existing customer base, who like their product and would like a part in seeing them thrive, is the best form of finance. If investing in independent breweries is something that interests you, Scottish brewery Innis & Gunn have launched a beer bond that is available to invest in until the 16th July. They offer 1.5% interest pa. in cash, or 9% interest in store credit to spend on their beer. Over in the US, crowdfunding playform CrowdBrewed has been created purely for small breweries to ascertain funding; it’s surely only a matter of time before the same happens here.