When Paseo closed earlier this week, a lot of folks reacted to the news as if they'd just seen a kitten get stabbed in the heart. It's not surprising that the fallout continues today. With a Kickstarter! To "Save Paseo." It's drawn almost $30,000 in donations as of this writing, up from around $10,000 this morning. Exciting!

But who is behind the Kickstarter, what exactly are they proposing, and can you trust them? What do the former employees who are still mourning the restaurant's downfall—as opposed to the four employees who sued the owners for alleged wage theft after being fired in March—think about it?

Here's the deal: the Kickstarter was created by Savvy Orders, a six-person company founded in July of this year that offers a restaurant ordering smartphone app. Raustin Memon, one of the co-founders, says they want to re-open Paseo exactly as it was before, and create an ownership structure that includes former employees.

Does that include the four employees suing Paseo? "We're not sure about that," he says.

"We have no intentions of opening it if we can't run it the same way it was before," Memon explained. He says they don't want to increase prices or change the menu. If they can't replicate the restaurant just as it was, he says, they'll refund all the donations.

But the former Paseo crew seems to be deeply skeptical. "As far as I know, from what I've heard from everybody, we're all kind of bothered by it," says Tyler Grantham, one of the former Paseo employees. He says they didn't hear from the folks behind the Kickstarter until after it was already up and collecting donations. "None of us are interested in what he proposed."

Grantham says Paseo's recipes are guarded closely by Paseo's owners and it's unlikely Savvy Orders is going to be able to get them. He says he told them so, but they "didn't really want to hear it."

So he doesn't like that the Kickstarter "is still up there making false promises," he says. "That's how I feel about it, and… that's kind of the consensus."

If he'd already donated, he adds, he'd feel that he was taken advantage of.

Back to the Kickstarter dude. Memon sounded indignant that Grantham and co. aren't ready to place their trust in his company. "We're pretty much offering the world to these people," he says. Their responses, he asserted, "almost seem manufactured."

He also says, "We were willing to do whatever it took to get the recipes," and suggested that not sharing them "out of spite, or something" is a lose-lose for everyone.

You can judge for yourself the credibility of the Savvy Orders outfit. Memon wouldn't tell me how much his company is worth.

Personally, I wouldn't trust them one bit.