CWEnder David Strom reports on Andrew Glantz’s sale of GiftAMeal

“I met Andrew Glantz, above, a little more than a decade ago, when he was a student at the Washington University business school, and I was a volunteer mentor to his entrepreneurship class. I first wrote about him for Nicki’s blog here, and provided a 2020 update here.

Back then, Glantz had an idea for donating food to food banks through an app, shown above, for restaurant patrons. Well, ten years later, Glantz’ business,  GiftAMeal, has been so successful that his company was recently acquired by SwipeSaavy.com, a major integrated software company in the restaurant back-office business that provides point-of-sale terminals, kitchen ticketing, loyalty rewards, and customer opinion tracking applications.

Glantz met Swipe Saavy’s CEO Jason Mayoral, above, at a restaurant conference, where discussions eventually led towards the acquisition.“The merger with Swipe Saavy really enabled us to put our foot on the gas, and grow even faster, both to help expand our partner restaurants and continue to build our mission,” Glantz said.

Glantz’s company, which is based in the Cortex complex, had five employees and had grown from the original 49 St. Louis restaurants to 1200 restaurant clients in 46 states (plus DC and Puerto Rico).  His first GiftAMeal customer was a local Scooter Coffee, which has grown to 70 Scooter’s locations, as well as 130 Lee’s Chicken restaurants, whose executive team is based in St. Louis. Two of his first clients are right here in the CWE, The Cup and Brasserie.

Since its founding, GiftAMeal has donated nearly three million meals and worked with 185 different food banks. “Hunger can happen to anyone at any time,” said Glantz. “One out of six kids will experience food insecurity on their next meal. It is not anybody’s fault.”

But another part of Glantz’ story is how he has both embraced and been supported by the St. Louis startup ecosystem. In addition to winning various contests, such as Arch Grants and competitions from Capital Innovators (a local venture capital firm), he has given back to this ecosystem in spades. “I have mentored many companies as a judge for the Wash U business school and elsewhere. I have also been a guest lecturer at several local college business classes. I am happy to pass along my knowledge and what lessons I have learned to these students and pay it forward.”

Glantz has seen firsthand how St. Louis can attract and retain business talent in a very collaborative ecosystem. “I am very gratified that I am still doing what I love and still expanding GiftAMeal,” he said. Nevertheless, “I always had the dream of having my business scale and have an exit from my startup. Especially when you realize that most of those startups that we were pitching against at Wash U don’t exist anymore!”

Glantz certainly has seen many changes to the restaurant business over the past decade, but feels the market has recovered from the tough years during the pandemic. “Our industry is very strong now, although there have been some changes, such as more delivery and to-go customers and more fast casual places,” he says.

GiftAMeal’s mission is to build more of a connection between diner and the restaurant, by providing benefits for everyone. “There are kind-hearted people everywhere, and since restaurant consumers don’t bear the costs of our program, it is an easy way to be generous,” he said. “All you have to do is just take a picture of your meal.”

Thanks David for sharing Andrew’s success story. To follow David Strom’s musings on technology, here is a link to his website.