Bridgehead is using its Plant a Bean card to raise money for a new roastery on Preston Street.
Ottawa’s Bridgehead coffee chain is using a new kind of gift card to raise money to fund its new roastery on Preston Street.
The money on the card goes first to finance construction on the new facility and then is paid back to Bridgehead’s caffeine-loving regulars in coffee, tea or other treats from their own shops.
Customers who buy a “Plant a Bean” gift card won’t be able to use it to pick up a cup of joe right away. Instead, the value will be loaded back onto the card in six installments over three years, with an extra 20 per cent added as incentive.
Bridgehead’s marketing manager Gina Becker says the idea didn’t come from a bank, but from the farm.
“It comes from a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) model that lots of farmers use, where you pay for the crop up front in the spring and you may not receive your produce until later in the summer and through to the end of the harvest,” she says.
“So it’s not shares, it’s not a loan . . . one way to think about it is as a form of democratic financing.”
Bridgehead is aiming to raise $200,000 through the gift cards, or 10 per cent of the funding for the roastery construction. But the initiative has only raised $33,000 since the cards went on sale in September.
The cards come in denominations starting at $250, with the most expensive card costing $1,000 up front. While the price tag may seem like a lot, says Becker, the investment makes sense for their most loyal customers. Buying a $1,000 card will net a customer an extra $200 worth of coffeeshop pick-me-ups.
“When you think about making regular visits to Bridgehead over the week, you would go through a surprising amount of money in a year,” she says.
But for many regulars, the initiative has gone widely unnoticed. The large posters in the windows of store branches are reserved for advertising cappuccinos and lattes, while handheld-sized pieces of cardstock on the counters announce the new roastery and the “Plant a Bean” cards.
George O’Donnell swings by different Bridgehead locations around the city “about four or five times a week.”
“When I come in I usually think about getting my coffee. I just sort of noticed it in passing, I haven’t paid a whole lot of attention,” he says.
Branch manager Harriet Walker says purchases of the gift cards at her branch at the corner of Bank and Gilmour streets are “not on a large scale.”
However, she says the company isn’t interested in pushing the idea onto customers, or “getting in your face . . . We just wanted to get the information out there.”
She says more and more customers have been asking questions and talking about the initiative lately, even if that hasn’t translated into many purchases.
Whether or not Bridgehead reaches its goal, the construction of the roastery will go ahead on schedule, says Becker. Plumbing and electrical are next to be added to the Preston Street site, north of Gladstone Avenue.
“To be honest, we didn’t really know what to expect with this,” she says, pointing out the company isn’t depending on their customers' goodwill or their open wallets.
The completed roastery facility, set to open in April, will also contain a coffeeshop and a staff training area that will double as a place for community groups to gather.