Snackpass Helps Local Restaurants In Berkeley Survive During COVID-19

A food ordering service that takes the social aspect of eatery and transforms it into discounts.

Snackpass is a food ordering app on both the Apple and Google Play stores that has helped local restaurants retain business during the COVID-19 pandemic. It was recently valued at over $400 million and secured a $70 million dollar Series B funding from Venture Capitalists after achieving 500K+ users in just a couple years.

Because of the lockdown caused by COVID-19 restaurants were no longer legally allowed to offer dine-in experiences. The food service industry lost their largest source of revenue from customers resulting in the permanent shutdown of 60% of U.S. closed restaurants. Berkeley, California is no exception to this and the local food service scene has suffered as a result. Just within June of this year, three notable spots have closed.

Snackpass has given users a safe and affordable way to order food during the pandemic with limited-to-no contact order pickup and without the high fees associated with other apps like Postmates or Doordash. Users can pick up their food in-person, skip the lines, and share the rewards of their orders with their friends on the app.

Snackpass affected small businesses and locals in Berkeley by creating a safe, enjoyable and convenient experience of ordering food in the face of a pandemic. The social ambiance and savings created from the app encourages and allows users to order from their favorite places more frequently. Snackpass created an outlet for potential customers to help small businesses in the food service industry survive.

Angel Garcia, a rising sophomore at UC Berkeley on their Snackpass usage:

“Snackpass discounts make eating out more worth it than other food ordering apps. The price for food pickup is comparable to restaurant dine-in costs and you accumulate unique rewards. This beats using ordering services like UberEats or Postmates that have a bunch of hidden costs. Also, the app is good in terms of waiting times as you can set your order from the comfort of your home and then pick up when the food is ready instead of waiting 15–30 minutes at the restaurant.”

Snackpass’s app is designed to deliver an experience tailored to users based on their social circles’ food ordering habits. However, for restaurants the app is a marketing superpower tool to generate customer based marketing and to foster a more loyal customer base virtually. The benefits Snackpass offers restaurants and customers are unique through various forms of in-app promotions at the individual and group level as well as rewards programs designed by each restaurant’s management.

Tacos & Co is a Mexican restaurant that recently opened during the pandemic in the Durant Food Court a block from campus. Since their opening they have utilized Snackpass to its fullest extent. Bernie, an employee and cousin of the restaurant’s founder on how the app has helped their business:

“Snackpass has given us the opportunity to take advantage of modern food service apps to create our businesses’ foundation. We have recently launched a subscription service on the app to our loyal customers that gives them way more incentives to order from our restaurant over our competitors. Our restaurant subscription gives customers the opportunity to take the most advantage of our menu and reward program designed for Snackpass by providing free chips and guacamole, double reward points, and exclusive access to subscriber happy hours and meal deals for only $5 a month. Without the app, I don’t think we would be as successful as we have been, and we are grateful for it as we understand the impacts COVID-19 has had on our neighbors and other small business owners.”

The pandemic affected small businesses, but it was also the reason some people downloaded Snackpass. Makenna Gordon, a transfer student at UC Berkeley shared why she downloaded the app and how it made her life easier during the pandemic:

“ I downloaded Snackpass during the beginning of the pandemic because of my boyfriend who advocated for it almost every time we ate out. I am now an avid user of the app because of the convenience and safety it provided during the heights of COVID-19 by allowing me to reduce the anxieties related to interacting with others and waiting in populated areas to get my food. The in-app promotions have allowed me to enjoy treating myself more often and with less financial guilt.”

Snackpass helped both small businesses and Berkeley locals during COVID-19, and as the pandemic calms down, we can assess the effects of the app on Berkeley community and other college towns their services have presence in. As of now their team plans on expanding their app’s coverage to bigger cities in the years to come with new big name investors making that possible.