Hockey cost Jeffray Gardner his place of business. Then hockey found him a new, better place. Gardner’s Marsatta Chocolate factory was suddenly evicted by a landlord who didn’t like the pick-up hockey games Gardner’s children played in the company parking lot. Now the Los Angeles Kings have joined a legion of friends and fans of the business to raise over $40,000 for Gardner, enabling him to move into a larger space where he can also retail his chocolates.
Gardner had found a location at the corner of Torrance Boulevard and Anza but didn’t have the funds to remodel it. His newborn son needed expensive medical care. So he decided to try Kickstarter, the website that helps individuals fund worthy projects. The response was initially disappointing. But donations tripled after the November 27 Easy Reader story about Gardner’s plight. The article caught the attention of someone who had a particular reason to support a hockey fan: Los Angeles Kings CEO Kelly Cheeseman.
“On Thanksgiving morning I was walking my dog and I picked up the paper and the story hit home,” Cheeseman said. “The hockey side of it and also I’m a new father, I empathized immediately. He’s a member of the hockey family, so we had to do something to help him out.”
Suddenly the calls started coming in.
“I was interviewed on KFI radio, first by phone and then Bill Caroll invited my daughter and me to the studio,” Gardner said. Caroll also tweeted a link to online version of the Easy Reader story.
Then Gardner was invited to appear on Fox Sports TV by Alex Curry. She asked him to bring his infant son Dustin along. Gardner was hesitant. Dustin, who is named after LA Kings captain Dustin Brown, was born several months early and wears a heart and brain monitor, making travel difficult. The interview was conducted at halftime and more pledges poured in. Still, it wasn’t enough. If a Kickstarter campaign is even one dollar short of its goal, the venture isn’t funded.
With just 22 minutes to go and the campaign still short of its goal, Cheeseman and the Kings organization stepped in and made up the difference. In total, Gardner raised $40,292.
Gardner now has the keys to his new place, is buying high-capacity chocolate processing machines and making tenant improvements to allow retail sales. He’s doing that while holding down shifts at Costco – he took a seasonal job so he’d have money to take care of his son.
Gardner sounds giddy at the prospect of getting back to focusing on his business while expressing his appreciation to his supporters.
“I have to thank the Kings, Easy Reader and our Marsatta Facebook Fans. I received support from Europe, Canada and of course here in the U.S. Asking for money was never something I was comfortable with, so having a system like Kickstarter, which allowed me to reward my supporters with chocolate, was a good option for me.”
Cheeseman was asked if the Kings players will be able to resist bars of gourmet chocolate. He laughed and replied, “Our hockey players have a rigid training schedule, but they burn through a lot of calories, so I think they’ll go through it fairly quickly.” ER
