This article contains outdated information as of July 9, 2020, please see the Bunz website for current program updates

Bunz,

As you may have noticed, yesterday we had to make the very difficult decision to reduce the merchants and makers who accept BTZ to just coffee and food. We are sorry for any inconvenience and disappointment this may have caused and want to keep you informed as to why we had to make this decision.

Trying new ideas is really hard. There are very few examples of companies that have attempted to share their revenue with its community like Bunz. We are still learning and adjusting the platform as we learn more about how it’s used. This requires us to make hard choices at times and this, unfortunately, was one of them. This change to the program is not an ideal outcome and we are sorry for any difficulty this may cause to individuals, merchants, and the community. As a start up trying to do things differently, this was a necessary change we had to make on short notice for sustainability reasons.

In addition to this, we made another difficult decision today that allows us to sustain Bunz and BTZ going forward. This was having to say goodbye to 15 members of our team. This decision was equally difficult because a number of us have been working on Bunz since day one. I’m sad to see them go, but also know they have great things ahead of them.

The reality we face is that it’s expensive to build and maintain a platform that hundreds of thousands of people use every day. It gets more expensive when you try to ensure those people see material benefits from using it. Reducing the merchant list was necessary to continue Bunz and BTZ for the community. We believe that these changes put us in the best position possible to allow you continue to use BTZ day-to-day.

Having said all this, we’ve still achieved something amazing over the last 14 months — since first launching BTZ. Our community of users and local businesses have earned and spent over $1.4 million because of this program. This is something we can all be proud of.

As a result of these decisions, we are able to continue to make Bunz and BTZ a community-focused platform in a more sustainable way. We admire our community for caring so much — you are the reason why Bunz exists and the reason we get up every day to try and change who benefits from platforms.

To the merchants and makers we’ve had to part ways with, we appreciate everything we achieved together through the Shop Local program and we wish you nothing but success.

Thank you for your understanding.

Sascha + Bunz HQ