Mom Tuscany is a new restaurant format established in 2021, which has successfully completed a equity crowdfunding campaign in 2024. It is not a restaurant, because the service is fast, but the heart of the concept is the revival of traditional recipes in a modern, streamlined mode.
This is a demonstration that not only high-tech companies can do crowdfunding: in this case the business is traditional but has at its core a modern and dynamic structure and mode of execution, because Mamma Toscana is aiming for a format of national extension, that is, to become a chain, with all that that entails for internal processes.
In order to finance their own growth, the members of Mamma Toscana asked themselves about the financing options available and they could have sourced the resources from the banking channel, but with completely different logic and costs. That is why they chose crowdfunding.
Before a crowdfunding campaign there is always the fear of the unknown. Even professionals, for example notaries and accountants, are not very familiar with this type of operation, so a lot of study work needs to be done. In preparing the crowdfunding campaign, the Mamma Toscana team understood the key to the success of this tool: if you expect to put a project on the portal and wait for the money to come in you will get nowhere, if you don't do specific and effective activities to make people understand the importance and benefits of the project you are proposing you will not get results. The work is strenuous, time-consuming even, but nothing comes without commitment. The project at the base obviously has to be credible and valid, but on this base one must then build with the commitment of a structured marketing strategy.
The Mamma Toscana team has learned how a flow of information must travel to get to its destination. It takes a very rigorous methodology to start from a point and get where you want to go, and the line is not always straight, but must be marked by precise stages. In physical businesses you are not used to working with data, which is typical of online, but working with data should be applied to all businesses. Database and CRM and marketing automation software allow them to make the most of the data, but still it takes the commitment of the entrepreneurs and the team to make phone calls to potential investors, because they have to talk directly to the people they need to give money to in order to be persuaded to trust.
A nice surprise for Mamma Toscana was intercepting a major investor who also has expertise in technology and as a partner will be an asset in improving the company's IT systems. I benefits of crowdfunding than bank credit are these: in addition to capital, important skills and contacts enter the company. Another example for Mamma Toscana was that during the campaign doing marketing activities to capture potential investors attracted the attention of contacts from different parts of Italy who asked about opening more stores, even though there was no mention of it in the crowd. The campaign, therefore, made it possible to lay the foundation for building the franchise network.
Andrea's extra advice for those who want to do crowdfunding is to evaluate and realize how much the platform can or is capable of engaging from a marketing perspective. Portals mostly deal with the financial part, but not so much with the marketing part: if this part is there, you can take an extra step, otherwise you can only rely on yourself or external support, e.g. a marketing agency like Turbo Crowd.
WEBINAR TOPICS
0:00 Introduction
3:06 Crowdfunding for traditional businesses
5:10 The fears before starting the crowdfunding campaign
6:20 The need for marketing to raise capital in crowdfunding
9:20 The unexpected benefits of crowdfunding
15:35 The differences between banking and crowdfunding
19:40 Post-campaign stocktaking
24:00 A tip for those who want to do crowdfunding
SPEAKERS
Claudio Grimoldi, Founder of Turbo Crowd
Andrea Fantoni, Founder of Mom Tuscany
