In April 2009, a cryptic sign appeared in the window of a run-down building on the 43rd block of Telegraph Avenue. Black print on white paper shaped a question mark, whose dot was a hand-drawn coffee mug. People slowed as they walked past, seeming to wonder: Is Oakland’s Temescal neighborhood finally getting a coffee shop?

The answer to that question was yes, but it took Remedy, North Oakland’s newest haven for the coffee-obsessed, a full year to move from enigmatic buzz-generating window posters to its grand opening April 22. 

“Partway into it I just ran out of money,” said Remedy owner and founder Todd Spitzer. So on Labor Day weekend last year, five months into construction, Spitzer trundled a coffee cart onto the sidewalk in front of the storefront. He used the cash from cart sales each morning to purchase the supplies he needed for construction in the afternoons.

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Spitzer’s unique approach to raising capital contributed to the café’s stutter-step progress toward opening. Rather than going to banks for loans or running up credit card debt, the entrepreneur offered investment opportunities to friends and neighbors, and eventually Remedy customers, to get his store off the ground.

“That’s probably not typical…not to say that it can’t be successful,” said Steve Bangs, lead lender relations specialist for the San Francisco office of the U.S. Small Business Administration, the government agency that supports small business owners.

Spitzer’s fundraising technique was nonstandard, but Rick Ohlrich, director of the Alameda County Small Business Development Center, said it might help him succeed, noting that businesses who can find investors who believe in their projects and are familiar with it tend to be more successful. 

Spitzer half-jokingly called his approach the “neighborhood community-banking project.” He didn’t want to pay interest and fees on loans to banks or other institutions that make money off lending, preferring to keep the money and interest local, and connected, to his business. 

“I figured, if I’m going to borrow money and give somebody interest, I’d rather give to somebody I know,” he said. “And so my friends are getting the interest that I would be giving the banks.”

When, midway through construction, Spitzer once more came up short on cash, he turned to the loyal following his makeshift coffee cart had generated. One of the regular cart customers became enamored enough of his vision to offer up funding that made her a 20 percent owner in the café. And, when his vision for Remedy demanded still more capital, Spitzer dreamed up his own stimulus package for the business. 

The winter rains were still pounding when Spitzer slapped a sign for the “Temescal Stimulus Plan” on his espresso cart. Seeking to raise $10,000, he offered customers up to 25 percent return for investments ranging from a $250 to $1,000, which would be returned to them in coffee and other Remedy products. He raised about $6,000 this way, a cash infusion that thrust the business nearly to the completion mark.

Now that Remedy has finally opened, lines are long (but quick-moving) and Spitzer’s loyal customer base has followed him inside into the spic-and-span, scavenged-desk and wooden chair ambience that’s funky yet inviting.

“We want it to be an experience where you come in and you’re just welcome,” said Spitzer. “You’re just going to have fun, you know, get some love.”

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