# Main Street Phoenix Workers Co-op

We turn local restaurants into worker-owned coops

## Elevator pitch
We acquire restaurants that COVID has impacted, and we make them resilient. We later re-launch the restaurant as a worker-owned business.

- Canonical URL: https://wefunder.com/mspp
- Entity ID: wefunder:company:86060
- Last updated: 2026-06-22T05:03:20Z
- Generated at: 2026-06-22T20:03:21Z

## Quick facts
- 💸 Raised $350K in investments, grants, donations; making 1st concept-proving acquisition now
- 🤝 Partnered w/ the Gates Family Foundation, multiple CO impact funds
- 💫 Our virtual Restaurants Rising Summit ft. CO Governor Jared Polis, restauranteurs, founders
- 💸 Plan to acquire & coop-ify 23 restaurants in the next 5 yrs, affecting 1100+ workers
- 👩🏾‍🍳 Team experienced in rest. consulting, management, equity initiatives, worker advocacy etc.
- 💡 Featured in NY Times, Fast Company, Impact Alpha, & beyond
- 💥 Helping women, people of color, undocumented workers own a piece of the businesses they work for

## Active fundraises
- wefunder:fundraise:45354: 4(a)(6) successful (USD)
- wefunder:fundraise:45355: 4(a)(6) successful (USD)

## Story
We've started in Denver, CO. Our long-term vision is to find Main Streets across America with large swaths of downtown real estate owned by real estate holding companies & hedge funds. . . . our strategy is about maintaining the independence of Main Street post-COVID by putting a worker-centered recovery strategy in motion.We're restaurant & social enterprise vets building an employee-owned restaurant group.We help workers & restaurants thrive in 3 steps.The path to ownership... We've garnered national attention.Colorado Gov. Jared Polis was the keynote speaker for the Restaurants Rising Summit we hosted this past March.Our team is unmatched – in experience & passion.Here's where we're headed...A more detailed look:Forward-looking projections cannot be guaranteed.What we're looking for in businesses:

## FAQ
1. **Looks like a great project! I'm pretty familiar with worker coops (I'm a political scientist who studies them). Some questions, in no particular order: 1) Your model sounds a lot like Arizmendi in the SF Bay Area (based in Oakland -- full disclosure: my dad was a co-founder). ...**
   - Hi Mark, Thanks so much for your questions! Our answers to them below: 1) Yes, we are very familiar with Arizmendi. Our Founder and Board Chair Jason Wiener has studied their model for 10+ years. 2) Jason works very closely with USFWC and DAWI. He has been retained by USFWC for a project, and his law firm has been a member for 8+ years. He is one of the participants in the DAWI-stewarded Workers 2 Owners collaborative, and has also worked with many DAWI work streams for years. 3) Workers woul...
2. **How is the Co-op revenue share paid out to the investors? Do we have a choice in what class to invest in?**
   - Hi Yoshimi, Thanks for your question. All WeFunder investors become Class B investor-members and receive dividends out of free cash flow up to 1x the original investment. Dividends begin accruing 12 months following the closing of the investment. Once a 2x dividend allocation cap has been reached, the co-op will begin making distributions back to investors up to 2x the original purchase price. Please see the investment documents on the campaign page for a more thorough summary.

## Team
- Marisol Lazo Flores (Managing Director )
- Jason Wiener (Founder + Board Chair)
- Andrew Newsome (Board Member, Main Street Phoenix)
- Lauren Ruffin (Board Member, Main Street Phoenix)
- Eric Byington (Acquisitions Manager)
- Miles Freeman (Chief of Staff)

## Q&A
- Q: How is the Co-op revenue share paid out to the investors? Do we have a choice in what class to invest in?
  - A: Hi Yoshimi, Thanks for your question. All WeFunder investors become Class B investor-members and receive dividends out of free cash flow up to 1x the original investment. Dividends begin accruing 12 months following the closing of the investment. Once a 2x dividend allocation cap has been reached, the co-op will begin making distributions back to investors up to 2x the original purchase price. Please see the investment documents on the campaign page for a more thorough summary.
- Q: Looks like a great project! I'm pretty familiar with worker coops (I'm a political scientist who studies them). Some questions, in no particular order: 1) Your model sounds a lot like Arizmendi in the SF Bay Area (based in Oakland -- full disclosure: my dad was a co-founder). Have you talked with them, studied their model? 2) What's your relationship with USFWC and DAWI? 3) Do the workers own shares in MSPP, or in the restaurant where they work, or both? 4) What's the pathway to worker governance like? In other words, what's the conversion process like from purchase to full worker ownership? 5) You said in the video that the leadership team has many years of experience in the restaurant industry. Does anyone in leadership have experience in worker cooperatives? 6) Do you have a specific geographic focus or are you looking for opportunities nationally? 7) What's MSPP's governance structure? How are the individual restaurants connected to MSPP? Is it a contractual agreement where you provide services for a fee, or are you an association that they are members of?
  - A: Hi Mark, Thanks so much for your questions! Our answers to them below: 1) Yes, we are very familiar with Arizmendi. Our Founder and Board Chair Jason Wiener has studied their model for 10+ years. 2) Jason works very closely with USFWC and DAWI. He has been retained by USFWC for a project, and his law firm has been a member for 8+ years. He is one of the participants in the DAWI-stewarded Workers 2 Owners collaborative, and has also worked with many DAWI work streams for years. 3) Workers would become members in the Main Street Phoenix Workers Co-op (MSPWC), the holding company. The holding company owns each restaurant and each worker has an ownership stake in the parent company. Workers also have direct democratic participation in the restaurant itself. 4) Worker governance is well established in our bylaws, which can be found at the very bottom of https://wefunder.com/mspp/form_c. We have honed this structure based on Jason’s more than 12 years of cooperative law experience and his work on more than 20 conversions. 5) Leaders with experience with worker co-ops include Jason Wiener, Lauren Ruffin, Rob Everts, and Dan Fireside. Rob co-led one of the most established worker cooperatives in North America: Equal Exchange. Jason has represented more than 30 worker cooperatives across the country and has served on the Board of Equal Exchange and Stocksy, and has advised the boards of several others. 6) We are focused on a 500-mile radius of Denver. Through local partnerships we are spawning stand-alone sister Main Street Phoenixes in other regions, namely New England and Chicago. 7) Please see our Bylaws for specific governance matters. We have designed a cutting-edge governance structure, whereby workers are sub-divided into districts to add a layer of governance. Each restaurant is a wholly or majority owned subsidiary of the parent company, MSPWC. MSPWC takes a fee based on free cash flow of each restaurant. If you’d like to follow up on any of these points or ask additional questions, Jason would be happy to speak with you. Please reach out to us at info@mainstreetphoenix.org and we’ll put you two in touch!
- Q: Hello, I would love to discuss further, first having a more detailed look at your financials including projections especially for the industry you're in and also about alternative funding opportunities available at our company if we are satisfied. You can drop me an email at richard@700capital.com, then we can start looking at financing your whole target. Thanks.