Neighborhood Grills
“BizX makes total sense for me. I don’t incur additional costs when people come in and spend their BizX certificates. I am not turning on more lights or renting more space. All of my fixed costs remain the same and I make additional income.”
John Schmidt is the founder of Neighborhood Grills, a chain of five different American-style restaurants throughout the greater Seattle area. Though all of his restaurants are popular, on any given night he still has tables that go unused.
By being a member of BizX, Schmidt sells tables that would otherwise go unused for BizX Dollars, which he can then spend on advertising, building maintenance, accounting services or a number of business expenses. These BizX Dollars effectively produce value that go straight to his bottom line.
John has even used BizX Dollars as a strategy for financing. At the beginning, BizX purchased scrip (meal gift certificates and gift cards) for Schmidt’s restaurants, which were then sold to other members of the community. This gave Schmidt the ability to make purchases through BizX right away.
“BizX makes total sense for me,” Schmidt explains. “I don’t incur additional costs when people come in and spend their BizX certificates. I am not turning on more lights or renting more space. All of my fixed costs remain the same and I make additional income.”
Schmidt started out purchasing bus advertising and recently used a line of credit through BizX to help build out two new restaurants, offsetting over $200,000 worth of work by using BizX Dollars. That’s 10 to 20-percent of his total startup costs for the two new restaurants.
Schmidt is able to pay back this line of credit by allowing BizX members to purchase meals with BizX Dollars. Even though that’s a lot of meals to sell away, Schmidt has barely felt the impact.
“It is not cash out of pocket,” he explains. “And it comes back out of my receipts in a steady, controlled fashion. I get tens of thousands of dollars of spending power without having to write a check!”
Schmidt has found creative ways to use his BizX Dollars simply by asking. “We were doing a $600,000 build out and we gave BizX an itemized list of what we needed,” Schmidt said. “We ended up using BizX for buying chairs for the dining room, the entire plumbing package, painting for the interior and even a beautiful stainless steel railing for our second-floor loft.”