GiftAMeal brought in it’s fourth partner chain, Lee’s Famous Recipe Chicken. Chain partnerships are the startups key strategy to enter new markets.
Andrew Glantz, GiftAMeal CEO
“This will help us grow into 12 more states, putting us in 23 states,” CEO Andrew Glantz told bizblip. “Their 131 restaurants bring our total to over 500 restaurant locations, as we approach the milestone of giving away 1 million meals… that we’ll hit next month.”
GiftAMeal is a for-profit marketing company with a socially conscious mission. Through it’s free mobile app users take a photo of their order at a GiftAMeal partner restaurant. For every post to social media, GiftAMeal makes a donation to a local food bank to cover a meal for someone in need. GiftAMeal partners pay a monthly subscription, partly for the marketing aspect of the service and partly to support the food bank effort. Markets include St. Louis, Chicago, Kansas City as well as parts of North Carolina and New Hampshire. Chain partners include Lion’s Choice and Andy’s Frozen Custard.
Glanz claims GiftAMeal has 500 restaurant partners and 50,000 app users, providing more than 970,000 meals to those in need. GiftAMeal picked up $100,000 in a non-dilutive follow-on investment from Arch Grants, concurrent with a $400,000 angel round this spring. Since the company got its start in 2014 it has had four seed rounds with the total raised (counting grants) topping $769,000 according to CrunchBase, where investors are identified as Capital Innovators, Skandalaris Center, Arch Grants and private investors.
Lee’s Famous Recipe Chicken is a casual dining franchise with headquarters in Lima, Ohio. Founded 55 years ago, there are 131 locations in 12 U.S. states and in Canada, all individually owned and operated.
Links:
On bizblip:
