By Stefanie Collins, editor bars&clubs
Melbourne rum venue, The Rum Diary has launched a campaign to crowdfund the expansion of its already successful Rum Diary Spiced Rum.
The expansion is for a version of its House Spiced Rum; the base rum is sourced from Trinidad & Tobago, while the spice blend has been tweaked since the beginning and now contains around 14 different spices including cardamom and vanilla.
Encouraged by their customers’, and other venues’, thirst and enthusiasm for the product (since February this year they have already sold over 700 bottles of rum) bar owner Hamish Goonetilleke, and his “trusty sidekick” Suze, launched the campaign on the Pozible platform.
According to a statement they have turned to the popular format as they “need help to kick things off and at this stage banks will not talk to us, and venture capitalists want to take huge chunks of the business”.
That is despite the demand for their rum already escalating with them going from “doubling, to quadrupling, to buying a 220 litre barrel of raw base product to keep up with demand”. In the four months since starting the venture The Rum Diary is now supplying over 20 of Melbourne's best bars including Nieuw Amsterdam, Mr Wows, Collins Quarter, and Franchesca's Bar, with five bars in both Sydney and Brisbane “locked in”.
The target for the project is $22,318, with an additional one third investment from The Rum Diary Bar, to fully fund the purchase and production of a commercial batch of Spiced Rum. More information can be found at http://www.pozible.com/project/198290