Snackpass, a food pickup app that offers a loyalty rewards program that functions something like a social media platform, raised $21 million in Series A funding led by Andreessen Horowitz this month. Now the service plans to continue its growth from a startup.
"Our plan is to get to 100 campuses over the next two years," said CEO Kevin Tan, who founded the company with fellow Yale University student, COO Jamie Marshall, and entrepreneur Jonathan Cameron, the head of sales. "The ultimate goal is to expand outside of college campuses and into cities."
According to Snackpass, the app is currently available on 11 college campuses, where it encourages users to order food online for pickup and offers a unique rewards program where points accumulated by student purchasers can be shared with other users of the app. That combination that appears to be driving user loyalty in college markets.
"One of the most striking things is the penetration on each campus. So at Yale and Brown we're at over at 80 percent, or even at 90 percent, penetration of the student body," Tan said. "It's very high frequency, so the average customer orders two and a half times a week. But some of the top customers use it almost every day or multiple times a day."
Although Snackpass has yet to land any meal plan partnerships with colleges and universities, the app does allow parents to add funds to students’ accounts.
"At the moment, we have a meal plan product where parents can load money onto their kids' accounts," he said. "This actually came about because some parents would message in and say: How do we add money to our kids' Snackpass account? And so we said it might be a good idea to build it."
Tan also touted the pickup model and the lack of high overhead that allows it to compete against the bigger players in the space, like Uber Eats. Along with the relative efficiency, Snackpass manages to be an add-on benefit for restaurants that might use it, stacked with other food app services, to connect with even more customers.
And the social aspect of the app also, apparently, allows customers to connect to other customers, with an activity feed similar to Venmo and the ability to send reward points to others.
"Every time you buy a coffee or taco, I might get a reward point… but I also get to send a friend a reward point as well," he said. "Some of our users have even said it's a low-key way to flirt."
A Michigan judge is putting sponges in the hands of shoplifters and ordering them to wash cars in a Walmart parking lot when spring weather arrives. Genesee County Judge Jeffrey Clothier hopes the unusual form of community service discourages people from stealing from Walmart. The judge also wants to reward shoppers with free car washes. Clothier says he began ordering “Walmart wash” sentences this week for shoplifting at the store in Grand Blanc Township. He believes 75 to 100 people eventually will be ordered to wash cars this spring. Clothier says he will be washing cars alongside them when the time comes.
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