Beet Coins – Financing Local Businesses

“It’s a different form of investing, you have to have a different set of values and a different set of expectations.”

Beet Coin is an on-line engagement tool that allows small donors to support local food entrepreneurs. Woody Tasch of the Slow Money movement says it’s designed for people who have a small amount of money to invest who would like to “chip in a little bit and be part of the process.”

Tasch says there have been problems with finding investors to invest in local foods “to some ways of thinking, this would be called high-risk, low-return investing. It’s a different form of investing, you have to have a different set of values and a different set of expectations”

Tasch hopes to encourage people to take a little of their money out of traditional investment structures and direct it towards local food businesses and local farms “we want to have very place based, very relationship based finance.” Tasch says a thriving local food movement needs to increase local investing to really thrive “we can’t create the food system we want just by making better consumer choices – that’s critical,that’s the best place to start, but we have to follow on with some investment capital as well.”