Phillip Island café owners Laura and Matt McNamara have put Island Whole Foods up for raffle so they can travel Australia and help one lucky winner own a café for just a $15 investment.
“A close friend of ours had heard of a resort in Panama being raffled off and thought it could be done with our business,” Laura says.
“It caught me by surprise because I’d never really heard of it before but then I started to understand how we could possibly change someone’s life while also moving onto the next chapter of ours.”
To be in the running to win the debt-free business, complete with $10,000 in cash, $4000 stock and all of the café’s equipment, customers must buy a $15 Raw Golden Chocolate bar either at Island Whole Foods or on its website.
“They don’t need to pick up their chocolate bar to be eligible to win,” Laura says, so online entries are not at a disadvantage.
Laura and Matt intend to use the proceeds from the raffle to travel across Australia with their family.
“We’ve sold around 2500 tickets,” Laura says. The raffle is two and a half weeks into its 11-week competition, closing on 16 October.
“For it to be financially successful we’d need to be hitting more towards the 10 to 15 thousand ticket mark.”
Though they’re on track, Laura calls the raffle a success regardless of the profit.
“It’s successful to me because of the response we’ve been getting. The emails saying thank you for giving people a chance and an opportunity [to won a café], it has always been their dream,” she says.
$2 of every entry is donated to charity, with recipients including Take 3, Plastic Free Phillip Island and San Remo, and Boomerang Bags.
Though people across Australia have entered in the competition, most entries have come from local residents.
“We’ve had a huge response from the Phillip Island community,” Laura says. “There’s a little bit of interest in other states but the majority are within Victoria.
It’s Melbournians who want the seaside change. They’re getting over their busy schedule and their busy lives.”
On their travels, Matt and Laura hope to consult cafés on how to improve their sustainability.
“We’ve really jumped on this sustainable, minimalistic life,” Laura says.
“Through the café, you become quite responsible for all the packaging and the waste that leaves your doors.
We have been educating ourselves and are really passionate about going to other cafés and consulting or supporting them to turn their plastics into compostable material.”
The raffle will be drawn at 2pm of 17 October.
For more information and to buy a raffle ticket, visit www.islandwholefoods.com.au.
