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Snackpass Order-Ahead App Raises 21M In Series A Funding

SAN FRANCISCO -- Heating up the competition to capture consumers' away-from-home food dollars, Snackpass , an app that allows anyone to order food ahead of time to pick up at local restaurants, reports that it has raised $21 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz with participation from First Round, General Catalyst, YCombinator and Inspired Capital, who join angel investors Nas, Larry Fitzgerald, and Michael Ovitz in their investment in the company. This round brings the ...

December 30, 2019 by Emily Jed

SAN FRANCISCO -- Heating up the competition to capture consumers' away-from-home food dollars, Snackpass, an app that allows anyone to order food ahead of time to pick up at local restaurants, reports that it has raised $21 million in Series A funding.

The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz with participation from First Round, General Catalyst, YCombinator and Inspired Capital, who join angel investors Nas, Larry Fitzgerald, and Michael Ovitz in their investment in the company. This round brings the company's total funding to date to $23.7M.

Available at 11 college campuses across the U.S., Snackpass users earn rewards for themselves with every order and rewards to share with friends.

In addition to focusing on individual users, Snackpass offers meal plan options, allowing campus organizations like athletic teams, sororities and fraternities, as well as anxious parents who don't use the app themselves the opportunity to load credit into a student's Snackpass account.

"Eating is an inherently social experience, whether you're grabbing a smoothie with a friend or checking out a new lunch spot a coworker recommended. On Snackpass, we don't want our platform to be just about the utility of ordering food -- we want to make it a magical, social experience for our users," said Snackpass cofounder and chief executive Kevin Tan. "One of our users once tweeted, 'at Yale we don't say I love you, we send each other gifts on Snackpass.' We've been excited to see Snackpass take off fueled by organic growth, and this round of funding will help to scale and reach entirely new markets in the coming months."

Snackpass works with local restaurants and franchise owners, allowing these small businesses to not only better manage the rush during peak hours and serve more customers, but also giving them access to marketing tools and analytics that allow them to reach and retain a highly engaged and loyal customer base. Restaurants can also partner with Snackpass to offer special promotions or flash sales to attract new customers and track their engagement with the establishment long term.

"We've been using Snackpass for a year and a half, and the app has been a key ingredient in helping us grow," said Tony Lei, owner of Raretea in Berkeley, CA. "Every time we launch a new product, we're able to push discounts and promotions that help drive engagement from both repeat and new customers, and as we've opened new locations we're able to tap into Snackpass's community to help supercharge awareness and create a loyal customer base that keeps coming back."

Founded in 2017 by Kevin Tan, Jamie Marshall and Jonathan Cameron at Yale University, the team bootstrapped the company and grew largely organically in its initial market of New Haven, CT. The trio participated in the winter 2018 class of Y Combinator and relocated the company to San Francisco in 2019, where they plan to use the funds to scale the business to 100 college campuses over the next two years, and build out their engineering and business strategy teams.