Ten more small businesses were awarded EDGE grants through the Division of Small Business Wednesday.
One of those businesses is Rail Haus, a beer garden slated to open later this year in Dover. Co-owner Donny Legans says they aim to be the first year-round beer garden in the state, filling what he thinks is a missing piece in the state’s capital..
“The hope is that we're not the only sort of cool, sort of hip business that comes into downtown Dover," Legans says. "But we're the first so we want to kind of latch on to that and hopefully it'd be a huge success.”
Gov. John Carney joined the awards presentation at Sweets and Treats in Dover, a 2021 EDGE grant recipient. He says supporting small businesses brings jobs.
“It’s huge," he says. "The role of small business is just incredibly important. When you think about when they do the calculation about how new jobs are created, something like two thirds are created by small businesses.”
Division of Small Business Director Regina Mitchell says they look for small businesses with proposals for a specific project and a clear story about how the grant will help.
“I believe that they make up like 98% of businesses in the state and employ over half of the people here," Mitchell says of small businesses. "So they are an incredibly important part of our economy. Sometimes people tend to focus on the big drivers, like the big corporations, the big companies. So we want to make sure that we're really focused on them specifically and how we can meet their needs."
Five STEM-based companies received $100,000 and five entrepreneur businesses received $50,000. Businesses who are less than five years old and employ no more than 10 employees are eligible to apply. The Division of Small Business matches a winning business’s investment on a 3-to-1 basis.
Seven of this round’s 10 winners are women-owned businesses, three are veteran owned, and two are minority owned.
Since EDGE launched in 2019, $4.2 million has been awarded to 68 Delaware small businesses in industries ranging from wearable medical devices to farming and restaurants. This is the sixth round of funding and over 120 businesses applied.
The next application for EDGE grants opens on March 1.
