A contest with a Guelph café as the prize generated some buzz in recent months, but hardly enough. The contest has been called off.
Shelley Krieger, the owner of two Red Brick Café locations in the city, wanted to give one of them away in her Win a Café contest. The Westmount Road location was the prize, along with all of its furnishings and equipment, and the training needed to run it.
Had the contest gone according to plan, Krieger would have garnered $90,000 for herself, while the lucky winner would have got the café for just $200. But the entries to the contest fell well short of expectations.
Krieger described the contest as part of the sharing economy, and patterned it after successful examples in the U.S., in which businesses like a bed and breakfast, and even a farm, were divested through a type of contest.
The idea for Red Brick was to get 500 people to pay a $200 entry fee, thereby generating the value of the business for the owner, and a $200 turn-key operation of the winner. There would be additional funds left over to offer free rent for three months.
But Krieger called the contest off this month when only 70 entries valued at $14,000 were received.
“(As) such we must exercise our right to cancel the contest,” she stated on the contest website. She said the entries and the entry fees would be returned to contestants, as quickly as possible.
In late February, Krieger hosted an open house at the Westmount location for potential contestants. About 30 people turned up.
