Named one of four 2023 Hospitality Technology Industry ‘Heroes’ today, GiftAMeal CEO Andrew Glantz talked with bizblip about a new kind of partnership that he hopes opens up new markets and customers for the startup.
“It’s the first time we’ve partnered with the mall, where they are having all of the restaurants in (West County Center) participate in GiftAMeal,” Glantz said. “Chains like Chipotle, California Pizza Kitchen, Chick-fil-A and a lot of really great brands.”
The goal is to bring more Millennials to the mall, but this partnership plays into GiftAMeals expansion plans — by picking up new territory via national brand partnerships.
“This can kind of be a pilot, when we go and talk to other franchisees or even corporate levels of these chains that are in the mall, to go out and work with their locations outside of the malls as well,” Glantz said.
Through its free mobile app users take a photo of their order at more than 500 GiftAMeal partner restaurants in 31 states. 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, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania.
To celebrate, Glantz tells bizblip he’s throwing an open party at The Food Hall at City Foundry STL on Saturday, July 23 from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. No registration necessary.
Glantz claims GiftAMeal has 50,000 app users, delivering more than 1.25 million meals to the needy. Glantz refuses to say how many full time employees he has, characterizing his workforce as “eight employees.” 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.
