By: Staff Writer
August 24, 2021
A USD$2.5m capital raise will bring the Red Lobster franchise to the Caribbean thanks to Bahamian owned Pinnacle Franchise Brands, also being made possible through the Arawak X crowd-funding platform.
James Owen, chief financial officer for Pinnacle Franchise Brands, the franchise holder of the Red Lobster Caribbean, told Caribbean Magazine Plus ahead of the company’s launch on The Bahamas’s first crowd-funding platform, the Arawak X, that: “The offering goes live today to the general public and investors are allowed to go online and subscribe for the shares, anywhere from $25 upwards. The rules say you can do up to $10,000 a year and we expect to have our subscription subscribed.”
What Pinnacle plans to do is raise $2.5m for them to use the proceeds to open up two Red Lobster’s in The Bahamas and then they will move out to the Caribbean, particularly the Turks and Caicos, Jamaica and Trinidad as primary first stops.
Mr Owen also said: “We can build the restaurants that we want to do in Nassau first, before we go into the other Caribbean islands that we have the franchise for. So in the first three months, we will be concentrating on Nassau. We’re hoping to open up Nassau’s first Red Lobster, probably in Q1 of next year and then if we can get the second one, depending on the Nassau Cruise Port, we put an application into the port for the new development, then we can continue our development.”
The downtown Nassau Cruise Port is a primary target for Pinnacle as the development currently ongoing promises to be a state of the art new port facilities, with restaurants, a theatre and other modern amenities that would entice even the most moribund of us.
“We also want a third location on Cable Beach,” Mr Owen said, incessant about Red Lobster’s star power to be able to bring in customers to the brand.
Pinnacle already have contacts set up in Jamaica, Trinidad and the Turks and Caicos doing feasibility studies in preparation for their Caribbean expansion.
Todd Beaumont, marketing director for Arawak X, told Caribbean Magazine Plus in addition that the platform is built for companies just like Pinnacle as it is meant for companies looking to aggressively expand without being held down by commercial banks.
Mr Beaumont said, “Unlike some other forms of crowdfunding, equity crowdfunding allows companies to basically share in dividends to investors who also have ownership inside the company. So as the company grows as the company benefits, so will the investors have an opportunity to also grow and benefit from their relationship with those companies.”
Anyone over the age of 15 can invest in a company listed on Arawak X, however some restrictions may apply to some Canadian and US investors.
If you are investing in a non-Bahamian dollar currency, you will have to wire your money in to Arawak X. “Basically, you’ll be doing a wire so yes, because once you get the funds out they’ll be transformed into Bahamian currency.
“So once you have all of your KYC (know your customer) documents that you need uploaded and you have already registered, we have made it possible for persons to pay through three means: One, international wire; they can also pay doing it from local bank to bank and I’m grateful that a that’s been made possible; as well as they already a Bank of The Bahamas customer they can do an online payment as well.”