HopYard

The biggest barrier to starting our business was being able to secure funding. We had a business plan, and we had the concept that we wanted to do, and we believed in it. But we met with numerous banks and got shot down right away. I know in the restaurant industry there is a lot of turnover, so banks are a little scared to invest in that. We kind of had a rough go. We met with a lot of people and we got turned away a lot, but it didn’t discourage us. We ended up getting some money from our family, and then we got the rest from local places like CBDC Central PEI and the Impact loan, and we scraped together just enough to get HopYard off the ground.

We used the Impact loan for our startup costs. The loan was great to have in the beginning because cash was very tight as we were opening up. It just gave us a little bit of a comfort level knowing that we would be able to pay the staff, the first payroll, and just made us sleep a little easier at night, knowing that there’s a little cushion in the bank account.

If someone’s looking at opening a new business, I would definitely recommend talking to impact. They were great to deal with, with flexible terms and good interest rates. I can’t see it being beat by anyone else.