Savvy Orders pulls plug on “Save Paseo” Kickstarter

In the latest installment of the Paseo sandwich shop closure saga, the “Save Paseo” Kickstarter has been cancelled by campaign organizer Savvy Orders.

The Kickstarter campaign, aiming to raise a total of $250,000 to reopen the Seattle sandwich staple, was canceled last Thursday after 312 backers had donated a total of $34,180.

According to a GeekWire report, donations to the “Save Paseo” campaign topped $40,000 last week, however, after a couple of negative reports from The Stranger and KING 5 some backers began to withdraw a total of $5000 in donations.

According to the KING 5 report, former Paseo employees were not in favor of the Savvy Order campaign. Former employee Gil Butler stated that “two of his former colleagues don’t want to work under new owners,” and former employee Tyler Grantham told The Stranger that “none of us are interested in what [Savvy Orders] proposed.”

Savvy Orders founder, Greg Gans, was reportedly surprised by the negative reactions from the former employees of Paseo. Gans attempted to reach out to the former employees, however, he told GeekWire that “they wouldn’t even have a conversation with us or hear us out.”

In the face of the criticism and the lack of support from the former employees, Savvy Orders cancelled the campaign. Check out their final statements on the “Save Paseo” Kickstarter page below:

November 19:

Hi fellow Paseo lovers,

We apologize for not giving any updates in the past few days, but we want to let you all know that we were working around the clock to gain a greater understanding of what we can do to Save Paseo!

We, like the rest of you, have had one goal in mind: keep Paseo open! But as we have proceeded with the earliest stages of the asset acquisition process, we have run into some pushback. We have not been privy to all of the behind the scenes details, but we would fully support Paseo’s reopening by its previous owner if the allegations in the lawsuit against them are untrue.

Our goal has never been to be involved in a controversy or a “fight” for Paseo. We only started this project because of our early and limited understanding that Paseo had closed “forever” based on its filing for bankruptcy. We believed that with the support of the community, reopening would be a relatively uncontentious undertaking. When some of the previous employees explained that they were not interested in working with us, we offered to turn the Kickstarter over to them.

But, if, as one of the previous employees put it, “[T]he recipes [are] his old boss’ best chance at starting over”, the last thing we want to do is stand in the way of someone making a living by acquiring his recipes through bankruptcy proceedings.

We gave it our all and tried to do what we thought would be best for Paseo lovers. But at this point, it seems highly unlikely that Paseo will be reopened and restored to its original glory by us.

Thanks again to everyone for your amazing show of support!

November 20:

Dear Loyal Paseo Fans,

We were happy to see that we were not alone in our love for Paseo and were thrilled about how many members of the community were willing to show their support when it closed. We truly appreciate all of your efforts and donations, however it appears extremely unlikely that we will reach our goal. As such, we are going end the Kickstarter, and refund everyone’s donations.

Thanks again!

Cheers,

The Savvy Team