# Tàstès Markets, Inc.

WeWork of Grocers-retrofitting spaces & leasing shelves to local food brands so they can sell direct

## Elevator pitch
Tastes is a real estate play. Like WeWork, we convert spaces into an upscale grocery stores, and sublease shelf spaces to local Food Producers at highly affordable rates. We drastically reduce complexity and barrier to entry for Food Suppliers and we give Consumers a store with source direct food and pricing. 80% of our first store has been pre-leased with remaining to be leased out by Q1 of 2022, secured with deposits.

- Canonical URL: https://wefunder.com/tsts
- Entity ID: wefunder:company:93470
- Last updated: 2026-06-02T05:00:57Z
- Generated at: 2026-06-04T02:07:42Z

## Quick facts
- Simple model - we are landlords of grocery store shelves. We lease to hundreds of local food brands per store.
- Brands sell direct - that means low inventory & labor costs for us. Other grocers net 2%, we net 34%.
- Consumers finally get Source Direct Pricing for local food
- Impressive Proof of Concept - 80% shelf spaces leased with deposits in hand
- 1 store nets $3.24M (at maturity) x 264 stores in USA = $855M. Estimated net in Europe is $1.7B.
- Timely - solution to nationwide supply problem, better food trend, sustainability and impact driven.
- Consumers vote for products they want on shelves. We are the 1st democratized grocer in the world.

## Active fundraises
- wefunder:fundraise:48956: 4(a)(6) successful (USD)
- wefunder:fundraise:49454: 4(a)(6) successful (USD)

## FAQ
1. **do you plan on basically staying in austin texas or expanding to other cities in texas etc. i have a ton of investments in austin texas would love to add another. love you guys concept. i do my investments on friday's.**
   - Hi John, yes we intend to take hyper local global. Our expansion plans include about 260 stores in USA and 3x that in Europe.
2. **Where are you at with respect to development of your technology stack? Do you have a Software team working this already or are planning to hire or outsource development after the raise?**
   - We are working with a company that will provide us the operations technology stack and are able to customize it to our needs. The cost of utilizing the ready made stack is only $550/mth plus customization is just a flat rate of $15K. In the future, we plan to build a marketplace platform. It will be built by a CTO at Dell and Chief Architect of Cisco. Thank you for your question!
3. **awesome concept glad i invested. you mentioned 260 stores and 3 times that in europe is the biggest thing having the capital to fund the construction? cause obviously once you have that huge step. how much roughly is it per location and will they all be the same size. what is ...**
   - Thank you for great questions John. For the flagship store (5000sqft), we need: $1.5M for buildout + $1.5M for a 1.5 year runway per unit. The most time consuming activity is establishing the ground work in a new city: real estate, permitting, pipeline of vendors. In Jan of 2022, we developed an acquisition model that will reduce permitting, buildout, lease negotiation, customers acquisition, and vendor acquisition time by at least 1.5 yrs per unit. We are currently pursuing an acquisition of...
4. **Thanks for response. I was asking cause I have access to a huge amount that can be used only for business expansions. I was about to finalize my investment before I saw $45/a share. Really?**
   - John, thank you for your question and response! Yes it is because we only have 3 million shares outstanding vs. most companies that start off with 10M or 100M shares. Please note that after Wefunder campaign ends, we have plans to split the shares as we have had several reactions such as yours and realize now that 3 million shares is causing the per share price to be too high. We will be splitting shares so the per share price is far more palatable. We are aiming to end up in the $10 or less ...
5. **Austin is a good test market - what is your advantage vs HEB (which I gather is down the block), Whole Foods and Trader Joes? My understanding is that HEB is fairly beloved in Austin.**
   - This is probably my favorite question to answer of all. Here's what we like to ask Customers and Investors: all things being equal with HEB, Tastes, and Wholefoods, which grocery store would you choose to buy from knowing the money that you spend at Tastes goes directly to your Food Producer with no middle man cut? Your answer is the same as everyone we have asked. They either choose to shop with us or will make us one of their grocery store destinations since the average family now shops at ...

## Team
- Cheryl Cunningham (Founder and CEO)
- Steven Siegel (Co-Founder (Finance, M&A, Expansion))
- Steve Larkin (Board Member (Marketing and Operations))
- Jim Eliasberg (Board Member (Legal) )
- Josh Hoffman (Board Member (Technology, Sales, Operation))
- Qingbin Yuan (Board Member (R&D, Operations))

## Recent posts
- Tastes Announces Exciting Potential Acquisition! (2022-02-13T17:10:40Z)
- Awesome News to Share with Our Investors! We now have Proof of Concept! See the results and find out how we are getting ready to blow up in 2022! (2021-12-30T22:59:32Z)
- MAJOR MILESTONE ACHIEVED! Investors, (2021-12-29T04:07:21Z)
- Fantastic question posed (2021-11-09T01:13:09Z)
- Momentum is the word of the week! (2021-10-26T04:56:55Z)
- Congratulations Investors! (2021-10-21T16:46:31Z)

## Q&A
- Q: I forgot all about this company. Wish the round was still. My friends family owns a semi big grocery chain in a few states and doing over 4 billion a year! Should have jumped on this right away. Here on out all grocery stores looking for investments I am in if great plan etc.
- Q: Hi There, how much do intend to spend on acquisition appropriate real estate to create the local shelf space? This can be highly variable depending on location. I understand the problem you are trying to solve, I worked for Nestle Canada for 10 years and saw how the retailer squeezed us for shelf-space fees and other listing fees. I would love to invest, but worry about the capital intensive nature of buildout of brick and mortar locations. I would really appreciate more insight on this point. Thank you, Rikesh
  - A: Hi Rikesh. It's fantastic that you have first hand experience of the plight of food suppliers. That is probably why you understand the value of what we are doing here. To answer your question on the intensive nature, it's really not bad. The raise for the acquisition of 4 existing, revenue generating stores that we will then convert into Tastes is a $20M raise. Around $9-10M will go towards the acquisition itself and the rest will go towards converting the acquired stores into the Tastes brand. This includes a cash cushion. Each store requires about $1.5M to buildout. The great advantage to our roll-up of existing grocery stores model is that we generate revenue day one and know exactly what we are walking into. This includes the number of daily transactions we expect, our rent and utilities, our equipment costs. The benefit of acquiring existing stores with pre-negotiated rent (especially in Austin) is huge. Rent is based on rates 4-5 years ago and we benefit from taking over those rates. The other benefits is that we shave off about 3 years of developmental pains per store - from permitting to construction, shelves to refridgeration equipment. We also take over a proven and steady existing customer base with the built in value of entire neighborhoods knowing where to go to stock up their pantry. We simply come in and create a better grocery store experience that has a strong emotional draw and value draw. Hope that answers your question. We are closing out Wefunder now. If you are interested in investing after we close out, please contact us directly through our website.
  - A: Hi Rikesh, the acquisitions we are making are profitable, revenue generating, existing mom and pop grocery stores. The conversion to our brand is far less capital intensive than starting from scratch. Each store from scratch costs about $1.5M to buildout. There are many advantages to acquiring vs. building them out. Through acquisition, the store buildout reduces to around $1M. Where we really begin seeing advantages to acquisition is in immediate revenue generation since we are purchasing existing stores. The other major advantages are time saved from real estate development process and the building of a strong customer base. Capital of $1M per store in comparison to other brick and mortar or technology companies is considered a low number which is not in any way considered capital intensive.
- Q: Hello Cheryl, I see you have answered most questions quite brilliantly. However 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.
  - A: Fantastic Richard. Sent you an email a while back. Please check junk mail.
- Q: Austin is a good test market - what is your advantage vs HEB (which I gather is down the block), Whole Foods and Trader Joes? My understanding is that HEB is fairly beloved in Austin.
  - A: This is probably my favorite question to answer of all. Here's what we like to ask Customers and Investors: all things being equal with HEB, Tastes, and Wholefoods, which grocery store would you choose to buy from knowing the money that you spend at Tastes goes directly to your Food Producer with no middle man cut? Your answer is the same as everyone we have asked. They either choose to shop with us or will make us one of their grocery store destinations since the average family now shops at 4 stores to get all their grocery needs in. I mentioned above "all things being equal". You may be wondering how that could be possible since local food is typically higher priced than conventional. Our price agreements with Food Producers take care of this. We understand that no matter how great our social impact message, people still value shop. One of the greatest advantages we have is that our Food Producers don't have middle man markups to pay. Therefore, they are able to to give consumer direct discounts. Our Food Producers retail food at Tastes at a price that is equal to or less than other stores because they are under our price agreement. What this means for Consumers is that you can get passionately produced food, harvested days ago at a price that is equal to or lower than other grocery stores. There is a long list of other differentiators listed in our deck and can be found here on Wefunder. However, I'd like to close out my response with one of the proudest differentiators that impact our Food Producers. At Tastes, they have to sell 20X less food to make the same amount of money at traditional grocery stores. Why? Because they net as low as $0.03 cents on the dollar over there. At Tastes, they net an average of $0.60 on the dollar. When they fail at traditional grocery stores (and 95% of them will), they have to figure out how to dig themselves out of a financial nightmare. We put an end to the perpetuation of turning good Food Producers into bottom line drivers. Our Food Suppliers pay $100-$250/month for shelf space and keep the rest. That means they can use better ingredients, not have to take short cuts or use chemicals. They can engage in sustainable practices, hire more people, and grow their business in a way that is not damaging to our food and soil. All this is made possible simply because we lease shelf spaces instead of owning their inventory. I can write a book about why we are above and beyond any grocery store in existence today, but I believe this gets the most important differentiators across to you.
- Q: Thanks for response. I was asking cause I have access to a huge amount that can be used only for business expansions. I was about to finalize my investment before I saw $45/a share. Really?
  - A: John, thank you for your question and response! Yes it is because we only have 3 million shares outstanding vs. most companies that start off with 10M or 100M shares. Please note that after Wefunder campaign ends, we have plans to split the shares as we have had several reactions such as yours and realize now that 3 million shares is causing the per share price to be too high. We will be splitting shares so the per share price is far more palatable. We are aiming to end up in the $10 or less range but cannot do so right now due to the current Wefunder campaign. We will do this at an appropriate time in the near future TBD. By the way, you may be interested to learn that we are currently working on an acquisition plan to turn 4 successful existing independent grocery stores into Tastes. They have stated their interest in selling to us and we are currently putting the package together for funding. This will take us from 1 store to 5 stores far quicker than anticipated since we will be reducing development/construction phase drastically. We have a 2-3 year plan to turn around all 4 stores raising their $1M total net profit to a projected $12M net profit. This may interest you far more than the one store model we are raising funds for now if you have a large amount you are able to invest.
- Q: awesome concept glad i invested. you mentioned 260 stores and 3 times that in europe is the biggest thing having the capital to fund the construction? cause obviously once you have that huge step. how much roughly is it per location and will they all be the same size. what is timetable to open one after permits etc. you have a blank check what would you do right away. what do you need the most to get you to the 260 stores asap etc.
  - A: Thank you for great questions John. For the flagship store (5000sqft), we need: $1.5M for buildout + $1.5M for a 1.5 year runway per unit. The most time consuming activity is establishing the ground work in a new city: real estate, permitting, pipeline of vendors. In Jan of 2022, we developed an acquisition model that will reduce permitting, buildout, lease negotiation, customers acquisition, and vendor acquisition time by at least 1.5 yrs per unit. We are currently pursuing an acquisition of four existing independent grocery stores. By acquiring existing stores and converting them into our brand, we are able to begin generating revenue immediately upon acquisition and continue to do so during conversion of the existing stores into our brand. When we enter a new market and develop Vendors within that city, those same Vendors will be able to serve all surrounding cities up to a 220 mile radius - it is a wheel and spoke operations model. Number of stores in a city is determined by the appetite for local groceries and population size. If I had a blank check, store #1-4 is priority, followed by acquiring 15 stores in lowest hanging fruits within USA to develop a comprehensive blueprint for global expansion which include franchising, acquisition of potential technology and development of Tastes as a global health and wellness platform allowing global apps to integrate with food sources seamlessly, giving Tastes a distinct advantage in efficiency and technological advancements by being the open source grocery store. This will give us distinct, first market advantage and a strong barrier to entry that will place Tastes as a leader in this space above existing global competitors. A $25M check and a seasoned, globally connected expansion team will get us to 15 stores quickly, at which point, we expect a blank check will arrive soon after to get us across the pond quickly.
- Q: Where are you at with respect to development of your technology stack? Do you have a Software team working this already or are planning to hire or outsource development after the raise?
  - A: We are working with a company that will provide us the operations technology stack and are able to customize it to our needs. The cost of utilizing the ready made stack is only $550/mth plus customization is just a flat rate of $15K. In the future, we plan to build a marketplace platform. It will be built by a CTO at Dell and Chief Architect of Cisco. Thank you for your question!
- Q: do you plan on basically staying in austin texas or expanding to other cities in texas etc. i have a ton of investments in austin texas would love to add another. love you guys concept. i do my investments on friday's.
  - A: Hi John, yes we intend to take hyper local global. Our expansion plans include about 260 stores in USA and 3x that in Europe.