How Lending Club Is Shaping the Future of Small-Business Loans

It did not take long for the daily rhythms of prosperity to establish themselves at Hungry Ghost Coffee Bar and Café, a recent arrival in a gentrifying Brooklyn neighborhood. The café bustles, and makes its money, in the morning, when commuters line up for a handcrafted caffeine charge on their way to the subway. Around 10:30, the freelancers arrive and park themselves on stools at the bar along the wall, beneath a row of large mirrors, and open their MacBooks. It resembles a very elegant workstation, with a jazz soundtrack. “When I was looking for the place, my idea wasn’t to do this,” owner Murat Uyaroglu says as we survey the space from a pair of $1,300, riveted steel, round-back chairs. Such costs were intimidating: “It adds up,” he tells me. “But it paid off. People talk about it. ” And they come back. Hungry Ghost, he says, became profitable in its second month. But by 4 o’clock, the freelancers pack up their things and Hungry Ghost empties. Nothing makes you sound older than essay writing service blog disapproving of the fact that the world around you has changed. As one afternoon last August became evening, Uyaroglu found himself behind the counter in his nearly deserted café and thought: This is not right. “I see people walk by. They’re not stopping in because it’s coffee,” he recalls. “At 6 p. m. , it’s the perfect ambiance for beer and wine. ”

By this point, Uyaroglu, who emigrated from Turkey in 2000, had become something of a mini café mogul in Brooklyn, with three cafés and a lobby concession for a local arts center. He had financed his third café with a at 8 percent interest, but it took six months to close–the government shutdown added an extra month–and he didn’t want to wait another six months for the $20,000 or so it would take to begin serving beer and wine. He didn’t even consider a bank, after an early attempt to get an equipment loan ended with rejection. Read the full post.