Hatch Reveals Top Ten Semi-Finalists Tonight

The next round of Hatch Detroit semi-finalists get a big reveal this evening at Ford Field, and the stakes are high for another food-related entry to make it all the way.

Recent winners like Midtown's La Feria tapas, set to open later this season, might appreciate the competition, although sources have said the Hatch panel might be more inclined to pick a clothing or similar small-retail client this time around, seeing as one thing the city truly needs is more small business-type retail shops.

For the maybe-winners, there's a lot at stake tonight. Batch Brewing Company, a nano-brewery in Corktown, has turned to crowd-funding to get to its current nearly-open status, but, as Crain's Detroit reports, they still need something like $75,000 in funds to go all the way to open this year. (That means, of course, that even should Batch win the whole bag this round, the prize money will still leave them with a $25,000 hole, which is roughly the amount of money they've been able to raise via Indie Go-Go.)

We'll report from the reveal later tonight and tomorrow, but it's really a wide open question as to whether these small-business incubator types are ready to truly help diversify the Detroit retail scene with innovative small-business ideas. We're good either way, but more restaurants are always a plus.
· Hatch Detroit to Announce 10 Semifinalists for 2013 This Thursday [ModelD]
· For Hatch Pitch, Batch Brewing Keeps It Familiar [-ED-]
· Crowd-Funding Paid off for Batch Brewing [Crain'sDetroit]