Business Insider UK has reported that London start-up Pact Coffee has cut 16 jobs less than a week after it abandoned a £1m crowdfunding campaign.
The company, which delivers freshly roasted coffee by post, terminated its crowdfunding campaign on Crowdcube on 16 March, after raising £190,000 – less than a fifth of its overall target.
Talking to Business Insider, Pact Coffee CEO and founder Stephen Rapoport confirmed that Pact Coffee had made 16 people redundant.
“It’s true that we made 16 redundancies yesterday from the team of 74,” said Rapoport, who founded the company in 2012. “It was an incredibly hard decision as my team are like family, but ultimately the right thing for the business, and I had full board support. These redundancies are unrelated to our decision to delay fundraising, and will not affect the quality of our coffee, customer service or our rate of growth.”
Pact Coffee has several thousand customers across the UK. When it announced the crowdfunding campaign, it said it wanted to raise more capital in order to scale-up, go international, and take advantage of a “home coffee” market that Pact Coffee believes to be worth over £1bn.
After the cancellation of the campaign, Rapoport said Pact Coffee was still in “great shape”.
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