Magnolia Brewing raised $150,000 from investors in 24 hours on Bolstr

 

Magnolia Brewing Co., the Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco, Calif., craft brewery and brewpub founded in 1997, recently expanded to a second restaurant and large new production brewery in the Dogpatch. The brewery’s rapid growth and expansion required $150,000 in growth funding to ensure they met their 2015 goals.

Magnolia chose to raise funding on Bolstr, a marketplace where emerging consumer, retail and manufacturing businesses can access growth capital from accredited investors. Magnolia needed the ability to raise capital quickly in order to expand production, improve packaging equipment and implement design work for a new line of packaged beers, which are scheduled to roll out in 2015.

“We couldn’t make enough beer to meet demand at the original brewery but now, with more capacity, we are finally able to expand our distribution footprint and grow beer sales,” says Dave McLean, founder of Magnolia Brewing. “Working with Bolstr was the easiest way to quickly fund the capital expenditures required to keep up with our pace of growth.”

Magnolia has always closely paired food with beer, and their newest restaurant, Smokestack, was named one of 2014’s Top 100 Restaurant Openings in San Francisco by Thrillist.

“People are choosing to have an experience with your product, with your beer, with your food. I think it’s important to honor that, and the capital raised on Bolstr will be instrumental in providing the type of experience our customers expect from Magnolia and that we strive to design,” McLean said.

Brewing up investor interest

Magnolia raised $150,000 from Bolstr’s network of accredited investors in less than 24 hours. Bolstr is an attractive opportunity for investors and it shows; every business on Bolstr has successfully raised funding in less than five days, with some achieving their goal from investors overnight.

Developing businesses have received over $700,000 in growth capital on Bolstr, and the company expects that number to extend over one million in early 2015. Investors on Bolstr have been paid back over $200,000 in 2014 alone, and nearly every business on Bolstr is projected to pay back their loans ahead of schedule. Thus far, three businesses have already repaid their loans plus a return in their entirety.

Based in Chicago, Bolstr was founded in 2011 by former investment bankers Charlie Tribbett and Larry Baker. Bolstr is a marketplace where emerging consumer, retail and manufacturing businesses can access growth capital from accredited investors. Every raise on Bolstr uses an innovative revenue share investment structure, where businesses can access $25,000-$250,000 to invest in growth, retain 100 percent of their equity and make flexible monthly payouts to investors, since they are sized proportionally to their revenue. Investors then receive revenue-based payouts until they make a multiple back on their investment.