GAF Assists a Small Business Serve Lunch to New York City Schools
When a small business owner needed financing to help her company’s growth continue, GAF responded by providing appropriately priced and a well-structured loan to meet her needs.
Little Green Gourmet (“LGG”) is a catering service that provides healthy, high-quality lunch meals to New York City charter schools. LGG’s lunch time offerings concentrate on organic fruits, vegetables and lean proteins. Both meats and fruits are locally sourced. LGG sells pre-packaged individual lunches and trays of food depending on the specifications of the client. Some schools, such as Montessori, require that their students serve themselves from communal trays of food in order to develop life skills in each individual pupil.
Ms. Isabel Gunther opened LGG in 2012. The company started at Hot Bread Kitchen, a shared commercial kitchen in East Harlem. After three years in this facility and growth in revenues in excess of 100.0% year-over-year, the company moved to its current location also in East Harlem at the beginning of 2016. It needed to lease new space to meet increasing demand. While the new location provided ample commercial kitchen space in which to accommodate LGG’s growing orders, that space did require some minor upgrades to the electrical to accommodate new appliances and some additional finish work to make the site more efficient. In addition, the company needed to purchase a van so that it could make deliveries to their respective sites throughout the city.
For these reasons, GAF provided a loan of $150,000. The loan possesses a ten-year term with an interest rate of WSJ plus one and will adjust quarterly. These monies funded tenant improvements of $25,000 and contingency of $2,500. Similarly, the space needed new appliances and to purchase a new van for deliveries. GAF also funded these costs providing $55,000 for machinery and equipment. The company also saw huge future growth as it added additional schools to its growing list of schools-served and needed PWC. To fund the ever-growing receivables, GAF provided $60,000 in permanent working capital.
As for working with GAF, Ms. Gunther stated, “I enjoyed working with GAF and am happy to receive low cost financing specifically designed to meet the needs of my growing small business. It was my first loan, which I feared would be a significant and daunting task for my business. GAF made it an easy, no stress experience. GAF enabled me to secure funding when other, traditional lenders failed.”