Having lived over 30 years in the Blacksburg area (and teaching at Virginia Tech for about that long,) John Boyer and Katie Pritchard, owner/operators of Blacksburg Wine Lab, have become passionate about expanding and diversifying the restaurant/retail scene of our small town to offer more refined, upscale venues for our denizen. That passion is what drove us to start  Wine Lab over six years ago, and by any and all measures it has been a resounding success financially and culturally. Wine Lab has created a sense of community and congregation for professors, administrators, business professionals, retirees, VT alumni, and current students as well. We have become a destination restaurant  for visitors from far afield, while simultaneously providing an engaging venue for regular educational and entertainment activities for locals. And we want to do more…

We are working on our next creative venture aimed at expanding the high quality food & shopping experiences in Blacksburg VA. Our Draper Road Purveyors LLC will totally rejuvenate a dilapidated building on the fringe of downtown Blacksburg by turning it into a combination upscale neighborhood cafe / daily shopping marketplace / provisions & kitchen retail store.  The open-air market feel will combine fresh grab-and-go beverages and lunch fare, with more curated international specialty food and kitchen products on one side, partnering smartly with a European-style cafe on the other. This will occur in an elegant yet comfortable atmosphere in which professors, students, government workers and business people, patrons of the arts, and young professionals come together to dine, shop, meet friends/colleagues, or just have a light lunch and libation during or after work.

THE PHILOSOPHICAL MISSION To be completely blunt: we want to continue to be a catalyst for transformation that helps Blacksburg become more like Charlottesville or Asheville in its cultural scene and dining/entertainment offerings. Blacksburg is going to continue to grow in its tourism potential, retirement destination potential, VT alumni visitation potential, and business investment potential for years to come…and we want to be on the forefront of having amenities in place for all of these groups to patronize and enjoy. We are also inspired to help raise the profile of Blacksburg to become recognized as one of the best, most livable small towns of eastern America, a easily achievable goal given our quaint small-town feel, our idyllic location, and scenic beauty….we just need to raise the bar for our commercial conveniences to bring it more into alignment with other comparable college communities like Charlottesville, VA or Davidson, NC.

In order to make this a reality, we are seeking to generate $2.5 million toward the establishment of this Draper Road Provisions & The Library Cafe through a combination of a Kickstarter promotion, investment from multiple private investors, and $150,000 in a term bank loan, with the owners providing $200,000 in equity. The operating company (OpCo) named Draper Provisions & The Library Cafe is raising $1 million from private local investors for costs associated with planning, construction, inventory, and daily operations of the business once it is up and running. Once that goal is met (and we are halfway there) the property holding company (PropCo) named Draper Road Purveyors LLC will then seeking to raise another $500-800K from private local investors in combination with a bank loan to purchase the property outright for $1.5 million, a price I believe to be fair and perhaps under-market value given the location and upgrades we will be making to it.

Our marketplace/cafe is projected to generate $200,000 in profits before taxes in the first year, $350,000 in its second year, and $450,000 on average annually after that. We are in a unique position to actually buy the property outright—priced at $1.5M, and with a right of first refusal in the lease in perpetuity—which makes sense given the increasing value we will add to the building via the operating company, along with the increasing property value over time given its excellent location for this venture. The success of the operating business component will further solidify and increase the short- and long-term profit potential for the investors, and property owners.