Over the past year and a half, restaurant delivery apps have seen a huge boom thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic. It”™s one that isn”™t stopping yet, either, even as more diners return to in-person and indoor dining.
According to a report from Bloomberg Second Measure, meal delivery monthly sales are still more than double what they were in 2019.
The downside is that delivery apps can take up to one-third of the revenue made on each order and other services like marketing, which can pose an often significant financial burden on restaurants that are already struggling.
Foodie Card, a company from Garden City in Long Island, is hoping to be a resource to restaurants and bring benefits to both businesses and customers ”” and gives back to the community ”” through its subscription service and restaurant loyalty program.
The membership program launched in Westchester on Nov. 1, after cultivating presences in Long Island, Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, parts of New Jersey and in West Palm Beach, with tens of thousands of members across those areas.
According to CEO Jared Katz, the company began its expansion initiative a few months ago and now has over 120 restaurants on board, with plans to double that number over the next couple of months.
Foodie Card offers a $29.99 yearly subscription in exchange for a 10% discount for customers every time they dine at a participating restaurant. It also has the added benefit of offering customers a reward point for every dollar saved, which can be redeemed for gift cards to Target, Walmart, Amazon and other retailers.
For restaurants, there is no charge aside from absorbing the cost of the 10% discount. In exchange, they are given access to customers from Foodie Card”™s directory and receive free exposure and shoutouts on the company”™s social media pages. There is also no long-term commitment; restaurants that no longer wish to participate need only give 30 days”™ notice to be removed from the program.
“The goal is to try to drive traffic into the restaurant and hopefully provide that incentive to our members to make them want to bypass third-party delivery platforms and go into the restaurant,” Katz said.
“Third-party delivery platforms like Doordash and Uber can charge restaurants up to 33%. Our goal is to leverage our program to give customers incentive to go into the restaurant, to get their 10% discount,” he expanded. “And the restaurant overall wins because when a customer goes in, they order more drinks, they order appetizers and they’re only giving 10% compared to up to 30% that they’d be giving if someone was going to order something to be delivered online.”
According to Katz, restaurants are often limited in their ability to market and promote themselves because they are busy providing their products and services.
“Our goal was to be that source for independent restaurants, so that they could focus on their core and we could help focus on driving their business,” he said.
Foodie Card hosts an online ordering and delivery platform for select restaurants as well, but its main purpose is to drive up in-person dining.
Additionally, the company donates a portion of the proceeds of every Foodie Card sold to the customer’s local food bank. In Westchester, that’s Feeding Westchester. In Long Island and New York City, the organizations are Island Harvest and City Harvest, respectively. Each donation covers the cost of meals for a day for one person.
“It was a way for us to put something together that supports local restaurants, supports people in need of food and then provides (local) foodies, or consumers, a way to find great restaurants where they can save a buck,” Katz said.
Katz said that Westchester is just one stop in Foodie Card’s expansion plan for the greater metro New York area, with next stops in Fairfield County, the Hudson Valley and New Jersey. The company sees great success in its suburban markets, which Katz attributes to the lifestyle of many suburbanites and the service’s popularity among families.
“We hope by the end of the month, we’ll have thousands of Westchester residents that are partaking in the program and we’ll continue to add more restaurants and work different marketing strategies to educate the audience and the community that we exist,” he said. “Hopefully it just builds up and then we’ll continue to kind of penetrate into Fairfield County. And I know since it’s neighboring into Westchester, that will continue to help as well.”
After that, Foodie Card’s goal is to move into the Northeast over the next year or two, and then to become a national brand over the next five to 10 years, expanding into the major metropolitan areas and their respective suburbs across the country.
For now, the company boasts its tens of thousands of subscribers, many of whom have a positive return on their investment in the card and choose to renew it yearly.
“An interesting metric is that 80% of our members use our directory to figure out where they want to eat,” Katz said. “So it’s a very influential platform. For consumers, they’ll gravitate towards the restaurant that’s on Foodie Card, and on average, our members make their $29.99 a year back in about two and a half months ”” by four or five meals, they’ll kind of get their cost of their membership back.”
Among the restaurants in Westchester participating are Fortina, with locations in Armonk, Rye Brook and Yonkers; Moderne Barn in Armonk; Miyabi in Pleasantville; Nonna”™s in Yorktown Heights; Pik Nik in Tarrytown; Sundance Kitchen in White Plains; and Sambal in Irvington, along with a host of other restaurants, pizzerias, ice cream shops and even chain eateries like Subway and Taco Bell.
