Stand With Sweet Release
By Kristine Bartley
PledgeMe.Project
Food,
I want to embed this project somewhere
NZ $6,075 pledged
122 people pledged
Closed
NZ $42,000 minimum target
This campaign failed to reach its target by 31/10/2015 at 7:00 PM (NZDT) and is now closed.
Make a PledgeAbout
Stand With Sweet Release
Project 2015-09-27 18:10:14 +1300
The details
Hi I'm Kris, and I'm the owner of Sweet Release Cakes and Treats. We’ve been been operating in the Capital Markets since August 2014. Our landlord is “Willis Street Parking Limited” whose Directors are Michael Chow and John Chow.
Pretty much since day one we’ve had a dispute with said landlords. It’s still ongoing. It’s getting a bit silly.
We have sought legal advice. Unfortunately there are so many points of disagreements that we can’t just go to the Disputes Tribunal.
Sadly, this means we need to escalate the case to the District Court. This is going to cost an estimated $42,000 based on the District Court Scale Costs. This will hopefully mean we can settle our issues. We will either stay in the premise with the conditions we were promised, or break our lease and move (with the acknowledgement that we’ve lost money installing a commercial kitchen in a premise we no longer use).
We need your help.
We need to raise $42,000 to stand up for ourselves.
So why should you help us? Sweet Release started as baking therapy during my treatment for Graves Disease. It was a big help with dealing with this lifetime illness. It helped me get my life back to “normal” and following radiation treatment, I decided to pursue baking as a career. It was one of the best things to come out of my illness. I love being able to experiment with treats and helping the community through the shop. That was a big scary leap from IT where I was working for 10 years.
As well as baking yummy cakes and treats Sweet Release gives back to our community
-
We offer free baking classes to people with an illness thanks to the help from Journey of Hope.
-
We have a work experience program with Active to help intellectually disabled youth transition into workplaces.
-
We are a part of a network of bakers delivering free baked goods to charities around Wellington.
Sweet release is a small local business. I started it to follow my dreams and I now employ one full time and two part time staff. Small businesses are often run by passionate business owners who wants to share their creations with you. When you buy from a small business, you are helping someone pay their bills, you are creating jobs for people in your community and encouraging them to continue doing what they love.
Making a stand
We believe that we are being taken advantage of so we’re making a stand. Some small business owners have been through similar situations but the cost of legal fees has kept them quiet.
We cannot do this without your help.
We are going to work our asses off to make this stand against the Chow Brothers. This issue has been going on so long, we just want sweet release for Sweet Release!
Making our goal means we can make this stand. It means other stallholders in the city market might be inspired to make a stand too (unsurprisingly we’re not the only ones having problems with the landlords). Most of all it means we can keep on baking you delicious cakes and bringing treats to Wellingtonians.
The great thing about having a cake store is that the rewards are always sweet. So check them out over there →
We want you to be rewarded for pledging so raise your middle finger with us and hit the reward you want with it.
Many, many thanks
Kris and the team
PS: Please spread the word! Get tweeting with the hashtag #SWSR and use the short url for this campaign pldg.me/swsr. Follow us on Twitter at @SweetReleaseWLG and @ us when you're spreading the word!
Comments
Updates 4
You need to pledge to see this update.
You need to pledge to see this update.
Third day of campaign update
30/09/2015 at 5:44 PM
Hi everyone
We're now on the third day of our campaign with nearly $3k pledged.
Thank you to everyone that continues to show their support via visits to the shop, messages, sharing our campaign and pledging.
We believe and have been advised by our lawyer that we have a strong case...we just need the funds to take action! So many big corporate companies think it's ok to treat small businesses like this knowing they won't have funds to take action against them but platforms like Pledgeme is changing that scene with your help!
Two weeks ago, our landlords notified us that our rent has now more than doubled due to a "market evaluation" and after speaking to a few other stallholders, we found out that we are the only ones that has received this rent increase, as far as we know. This is effective as of tomorrow. Two weeks notice doesn't seem fair does it? It is in dispute. If you believe that this particular dispute is not fair, please continue to share and pledge towards our campaign so we don't have to deal with this sort of behavior from them anymore.
Thanks again everyone.
xx
Sweet Release Team
The beginning...hot water
28/09/2015 at 3:22 PM
With the project now live for a couple hours, let me take you through the beginning...
Note that this is only one out of the many issues we are in dispute over.
Before we signed the lease, we were told many times by the two Property Managers, Steven Zhu and Justin Chang (now ex property manager and owns Where's Charlie and Fish n Chips shop in Capital Market) that hot water was ready to go and all we needed to do was install sinks.
Literally on my first day of the lease, we encountered an issue. There was no hot water or plumbing in the shops I was allocated. My plumber called the architect and after some investigation, it was confirmed that there were no pipes or hot water. Steven continued to say that hot water was there and even came on site to show me pipes. In order to get opened on time, I gave the plumbers to go ahead with what needed to happen to get us open and sort out those issues out later.
We have been disputing this case for awhile now as they have since denied promising the hot water being available at all. Justin even went as far as writing a legal letter advising that he never made those promises and that he was onsite when I signed my lease to confirm the other property manager Steven never made other promises now also in dispute...he wasn't on site when I signed my lease. I asked him why he wrote that letter fully knowing he wasn't there and his reply was "just looking out for himself to stay on the good side of the Chow Brothers". Poor Justin must have forgotten that a friend of mine came on site that day and while she was waiting for me, he also told her that all we had to do was put sinks in. He left to go to an outside appointment when I arrived to sign my lease. That friend has written a letter confirming of her conversation with him and that he left before I signed my lease to back us up in court.
Pledgers 122
01/10/2015 at 5:54pm
"Way to go, Ultra-Mecha-Baking Taren! Yum Yum!"
01/10/2015 at 2:57pm
01/10/2015 at 10:44am
"Good luck, Kris!"
01/10/2015 at 10:35am
01/10/2015 at 9:10am
01/10/2015 at 5:22am
"I love everything about what these guys do & hope to see them continue to share the love - baking is love made visible!"
01/10/2015 at 12:16am
30/09/2015 at 10:43pm
30/09/2015 at 10:25pm
30/09/2015 at 9:31pm
"I wouldn't let willy wonka down ether "
30/09/2015 at 9:18pm
30/09/2015 at 9:14pm
30/09/2015 at 9:01pm
"Good luck, good on you for standing up to bullying. The Chow brothers are scum"
30/09/2015 at 8:54pm
"Go for it!! :)"
30/09/2015 at 7:14pm
"Good luck!"
30/09/2015 at 4:43pm
30/09/2015 at 12:18pm
30/09/2015 at 12:17pm
"I would order one of the people caked if I could afford to. But I'm still seeing if I can talk a bunch of people into it."
30/09/2015 at 11:50am
30/09/2015 at 10:51am
30/09/2015 at 9:57am
"Go Kris! "
29/09/2015 at 10:14pm
"May you be the winner!"
29/09/2015 at 7:27pm
"Best of luck <3 #SWSR "
29/09/2015 at 7:01pm
29/09/2015 at 6:34pm
"Good luck! Hope you get there!"
29/09/2015 at 5:46pm
"The best place in town to get a vegan sugar fix!"
29/09/2015 at 3:45pm
29/09/2015 at 11:39am
29/09/2015 at 7:56am
29/09/2015 at 6:55am
Followers 7
Followers of Stand With Sweet Release
Stand With Sweet Release
Project 2015-09-27 18:10:14 +1300
The details
Hi I'm Kris, and I'm the owner of Sweet Release Cakes and Treats. We’ve been been operating in the Capital Markets since August 2014. Our landlord is “Willis Street Parking Limited” whose Directors are Michael Chow and John Chow.
Pretty much since day one we’ve had a dispute with said landlords. It’s still ongoing. It’s getting a bit silly.
We have sought legal advice. Unfortunately there are so many points of disagreements that we can’t just go to the Disputes Tribunal.
Sadly, this means we need to escalate the case to the District Court. This is going to cost an estimated $42,000 based on the District Court Scale Costs. This will hopefully mean we can settle our issues. We will either stay in the premise with the conditions we were promised, or break our lease and move (with the acknowledgement that we’ve lost money installing a commercial kitchen in a premise we no longer use).
We need your help.
We need to raise $42,000 to stand up for ourselves.
So why should you help us? Sweet Release started as baking therapy during my treatment for Graves Disease. It was a big help with dealing with this lifetime illness. It helped me get my life back to “normal” and following radiation treatment, I decided to pursue baking as a career. It was one of the best things to come out of my illness. I love being able to experiment with treats and helping the community through the shop. That was a big scary leap from IT where I was working for 10 years.
As well as baking yummy cakes and treats Sweet Release gives back to our community
-
We offer free baking classes to people with an illness thanks to the help from Journey of Hope.
-
We have a work experience program with Active to help intellectually disabled youth transition into workplaces.
-
We are a part of a network of bakers delivering free baked goods to charities around Wellington.
Sweet release is a small local business. I started it to follow my dreams and I now employ one full time and two part time staff. Small businesses are often run by passionate business owners who wants to share their creations with you. When you buy from a small business, you are helping someone pay their bills, you are creating jobs for people in your community and encouraging them to continue doing what they love.
Making a stand
We believe that we are being taken advantage of so we’re making a stand. Some small business owners have been through similar situations but the cost of legal fees has kept them quiet.
We cannot do this without your help.
We are going to work our asses off to make this stand against the Chow Brothers. This issue has been going on so long, we just want sweet release for Sweet Release!
Making our goal means we can make this stand. It means other stallholders in the city market might be inspired to make a stand too (unsurprisingly we’re not the only ones having problems with the landlords). Most of all it means we can keep on baking you delicious cakes and bringing treats to Wellingtonians.
The great thing about having a cake store is that the rewards are always sweet. So check them out over there →
We want you to be rewarded for pledging so raise your middle finger with us and hit the reward you want with it.
Many, many thanks
Kris and the team
PS: Please spread the word! Get tweeting with the hashtag #SWSR and use the short url for this campaign pldg.me/swsr. Follow us on Twitter at @SweetReleaseWLG and @ us when you're spreading the word!
Comments
You need to pledge to see this update.
You need to pledge to see this update.
Third day of campaign update
30/09/2015 at 5:44 PM
Hi everyone
We're now on the third day of our campaign with nearly $3k pledged.
Thank you to everyone that continues to show their support via visits to the shop, messages, sharing our campaign and pledging.
We believe and have been advised by our lawyer that we have a strong case...we just need the funds to take action! So many big corporate companies think it's ok to treat small businesses like this knowing they won't have funds to take action against them but platforms like Pledgeme is changing that scene with your help!
Two weeks ago, our landlords notified us that our rent has now more than doubled due to a "market evaluation" and after speaking to a few other stallholders, we found out that we are the only ones that has received this rent increase, as far as we know. This is effective as of tomorrow. Two weeks notice doesn't seem fair does it? It is in dispute. If you believe that this particular dispute is not fair, please continue to share and pledge towards our campaign so we don't have to deal with this sort of behavior from them anymore.
Thanks again everyone.
xx
Sweet Release Team
The beginning...hot water
28/09/2015 at 3:22 PM
With the project now live for a couple hours, let me take you through the beginning...
Note that this is only one out of the many issues we are in dispute over.
Before we signed the lease, we were told many times by the two Property Managers, Steven Zhu and Justin Chang (now ex property manager and owns Where's Charlie and Fish n Chips shop in Capital Market) that hot water was ready to go and all we needed to do was install sinks.
Literally on my first day of the lease, we encountered an issue. There was no hot water or plumbing in the shops I was allocated. My plumber called the architect and after some investigation, it was confirmed that there were no pipes or hot water. Steven continued to say that hot water was there and even came on site to show me pipes. In order to get opened on time, I gave the plumbers to go ahead with what needed to happen to get us open and sort out those issues out later.
We have been disputing this case for awhile now as they have since denied promising the hot water being available at all. Justin even went as far as writing a legal letter advising that he never made those promises and that he was onsite when I signed my lease to confirm the other property manager Steven never made other promises now also in dispute...he wasn't on site when I signed my lease. I asked him why he wrote that letter fully knowing he wasn't there and his reply was "just looking out for himself to stay on the good side of the Chow Brothers". Poor Justin must have forgotten that a friend of mine came on site that day and while she was waiting for me, he also told her that all we had to do was put sinks in. He left to go to an outside appointment when I arrived to sign my lease. That friend has written a letter confirming of her conversation with him and that he left before I signed my lease to back us up in court.
01/10/2015 at 5:54pm
"Way to go, Ultra-Mecha-Baking Taren! Yum Yum!"
01/10/2015 at 2:57pm
01/10/2015 at 10:44am
"Good luck, Kris!"
01/10/2015 at 10:35am
01/10/2015 at 9:10am
01/10/2015 at 5:22am
"I love everything about what these guys do & hope to see them continue to share the love - baking is love made visible!"
01/10/2015 at 12:16am
30/09/2015 at 10:43pm
30/09/2015 at 10:25pm
30/09/2015 at 9:31pm
"I wouldn't let willy wonka down ether "
30/09/2015 at 9:18pm
30/09/2015 at 9:14pm
30/09/2015 at 9:01pm
"Good luck, good on you for standing up to bullying. The Chow brothers are scum"
30/09/2015 at 8:54pm
"Go for it!! :)"
30/09/2015 at 7:14pm
"Good luck!"
30/09/2015 at 4:43pm
30/09/2015 at 12:18pm
30/09/2015 at 12:17pm
"I would order one of the people caked if I could afford to. But I'm still seeing if I can talk a bunch of people into it."
30/09/2015 at 11:50am
30/09/2015 at 10:51am
30/09/2015 at 9:57am
"Go Kris! "
29/09/2015 at 10:14pm
"May you be the winner!"
29/09/2015 at 7:27pm
"Best of luck <3 #SWSR "
29/09/2015 at 7:01pm
29/09/2015 at 6:34pm
"Good luck! Hope you get there!"
29/09/2015 at 5:46pm
"The best place in town to get a vegan sugar fix!"
29/09/2015 at 3:45pm
29/09/2015 at 11:39am