SnackPass (food discount app)
by Joe · 14 things on Twos
- “At the time, there was this girl I was trying to impress. Her favorite smoothie place was Tropical Smoothie. I thought it would be quite a gesture if I sent her a gift on the app and everyone could see it. It just clicked.”
- Gifting became a special language for Snackpass, similar to Facebook’s poke feature in the early days.
- Built a network effect through gifting and other social features, differentiating itself within this crowded and highly fragmented food space.
- Getting their first 10,000 customers 🔥
- Create an amazing product
- Establish a college ambassador program
- They experimented with it by hiring over 60 brand ambassadors all over New Haven to supercharge the growth. They tried many different angles, from partnering with sororities, athletic teams, to campus groups, and they gave away tons of free gifts, merchandise for people to try out the app.
- They wrote down all the key learnings in a Google doc and created a replicable playbook for other campuses. This program helped them to grow to 10 campuses, achieving over $10M in GMV and 25% month-over-month growth by 2019 - accomplishing all with 8 employees.
- They charge restaurants a 7% commission for mobile orders which is 4x lower than Uber Eats and other delivery players.
- For example, restaurants can access all the customer data through Snackpass’s analytics dashboard and launch customizable promotional campaigns and automated retention emails to bring their customers back.
- Challenging roads ahead...
- How to retain college students after they graduate?
- How to hire the best people and maintain a playful culture?
- How to prioritize which markets to tackle?