AN online food discovery start-up has raised more than half of its declared target on the day it opened to investors on the Angels Den crowdfunding platform.
Edinburgh-based Flavourly, which delivers fine food and drink to consumers in exchange for a monthly subscription, is aiming to raise £116,000 with the campaign.
By 6pm last night it had raised £68,969 - nearly 60% of its target - from the crowd.
Flavourly has earmarked the funds for growth capital and to aggressively expand subscription numbers.
The rapid take up from investors came after Flavourly, established by Ryan O'Rorke, had lined up 15 potential investors at a "speedfunding" event in London.
In the last six months it has amassed 1500 paying subscribers who, for an outlay of £15 per month, receive a monthly Flavour Box containing eight to 12 award-winning food and drink products.
To date 177,020 individual products from more than 90 brands have been supplied.
The service is praised for offering the opportunity it gives small producers to put their wares directly in front of consumers and trade customers.
Mr O'Rorke, who has set a £1 million turnover target for Flavourly this year, previously secured £34,000 of funding by winning business competition the Scottish EDGE. He has also secured seed capital from Diet Chef founder Kevin Dorren.
The 25-year-old entrepreneur launched Flavourly in June after spotting a gap in the market.
He said he had pursued crowdfunding because he was seeking investors who could "add value" to his business as well as capital, noting that he was keen to collaborate with investors who could provide insight into customer acquisition, marketing technology and finance.
The business is currently part of the nest programme at Entrepreneurial Spark (E-Spark), which Mr O'Rorke described as an "accelerator for highly-scalable companies". He said E-Spark had "added value in every field" of the business and introduced him to Mr Dorren.
With one successful crowdfunding venture all but secure, Mr O'Rorke is already plotting the next one which he hopes will raise between £500,000 and £1m, "once we have scalable growth".
The food enthusiast said the proceeds from that would go into achieving scale and accelerating customer acquisition.
Last month Beer52, an online craft beer club owned by James Brown, a friend of Mr O'Rorke's, met its £100,000 crowdfunding target within 38 days of launching on Angels Den.
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