LetsGoForDinner Blog

December Newsletter - New Charities, New Restaurants, Christmas Gifts, New Membership Prices, Card News and a Contest

fgsteiner — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 00:21:50 +0000

We just sent out our December newsletter to 1,500 members….

Dear Members,

We have lots of exciting news; New Charities, New Restaurants, Christmas Gifts, New Membership Prices, Card News and a Contest.

To those who responded to our last email, thank you very much for doing so. To those who have given us their email but not signed up for the membership, just a reminder that you have until next week before membership prices increase.

New Charity

As of February, we will be supporting the Positive Women’s Network - www.pwn.bc.ca - watch this space for more details.

New Restaurants

We are very pleased to announce that Joe Fortes Seafood & Chophouse and Goldfish Pacific Kitchen are the newest live additions to LetsGoForDinner. Look for a lot more of Vancouver’s best restaurants to be added in the next few weeks and into the New Year.

Christmas Gift – Membership

These make great gifts! To find out more email us at holidaygifts@letsgofordinner.com

Membership Prices – Going Up

The price of the membership is steadily going up with the number of restaurants. By the end of next week the price will be $5. Act now…remember the membership lasts a year and half the membership fee goes directly to Charity.

Christmas “Blackout”

LetsGoForDinner.com Loyalty Certificates WILL NOT be redeemed at any restaurant between December 15^th and January 1^st. Please consider this when buying your loyalty certificates. *All certificates expire 90 days from the date of purchase.

Contest! Win an IPod® shuffle or a $70 iTunes® Gift Card – Ends January 21, 2009.
How to enter: Refer your friends to LetsGoForDinner and tell us who signed up. For all your friends who sign up; send an email to us at members@letsgofordinner.com with their name and membership number. Two winners will be selected: one for the most referrals and one at random. Good Luck.

The staff and management of LetsGoForDinner.com would like to wish everyone a safe and happy holiday season!

Cheers,

Craig

LetsGoForDinner.com

Charity, Charity everywhere and not an investor

fgsteiner — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 01:26:25 +0000

It has been a crazy 10 days - we had two charities give us Board approval to work with us and we were at the Angel Forum. We have had moderate interest from Investors but it is a crazy time, we have customers, traffic, charity signing contracts and investors are still elusive.

Today I went out to see a Charity and discuss our launch plans and to get pen to paper. It was quite exciting going to collect it. Possibly get it done first part of the meeting so we clear that out and move on. it happened just that way and they signed!

Tech is slowly moving along loading images of restaurants onto the drupal site so we can be ready for new version.

Training 2 restauarnts this week on the new system, closed a new restaurant on Friday. I got training as well.

Progress at least

Up and Down Week This is the week of Oct 15th

fgsteiner — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 17:13:03 +0000

This weeks change of weather has brought on the dreaded fall lurgy. This is slowing me down and as such I do not like talking to investors or charities, so I am emailing which is cheating really. Hopefully it will pass quickly.

Investors, post the Vantec presentation have been elusive, maybe the long weekend but no replies to our emails after expressed interest. Will be chasing shortly.

Met with Lyal on version 2.0 of the software and is looking promising. Meeting Rick tomorrow to discuss the same thing. Looking forward to getting this away. Our existing developer has left us in a pickle

Exciting Days - this is the week of Oct 22

fgsteiner — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 17:12:21 +0000

Presneted to a charity, was contacted by another one while there, another replied, spoke to a VC in the US who approached us, spoke to a restauarnt interested in the solution and investing, another angel has come out of the woodwork, met 2 developers, spoke with UBC coop about Jan student, put forward development for equity, old developer helped out.. nice and asking for other bits to get POS/Squirrel live, analysed 2 weeks of Kidney Data, all in the last 2 days and 35 memberships out

Getting there

fgsteiner — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 18:24:16 +0000

The Rotary Club Vancouver Sunrise came back and let us know they like the new contract and hopefully we get the signed agreement in a few days. We are just now getting the logo for the card… 3 weeks lead time.

Speaking of the cards… tested it out for myself and it all went smoothly.. card accepted, swiped and redeemed seemlessly, waiter said it even thanked him, even on my own account page was updated, brilliant.

We made the shortlist of presenters at Vantec for October 7th and afterwards we will be meeting a venture capitalist to discuss our project. We know that this is a long process with venture capitalists but you have to start and be in for the long haul.

Final tweaks to the old website and looks like a great solution so Calgary is still visible.

Pushing steadily on enhancements but slow

Keeps on Going

fgsteiner — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 18:21:51 +0000

Busy weeks.. many people excited about the product. Emailed 2 non-profits - 48 hours ago 1 has come back. Still waiting on 2 other charities … going slow, looks like the inertia of their own organisations will kill the interest …it is too bad. Both came back and are wandering slowly to sign.

Spoke to two online food bloggers and they are keen to meet up .. could be some potential here.

Saw an interesting product that would allows people to round up bills and the round up would be given to a charity.. nice idea.. hard to work in practice given who they are targeting.. large corporations. Noticed that Safeway is asking for donations and overlaps on this space.

A tech blog wants to write us up in a few weeks.

Need to work on our next stage of marketing and signing restaurants.

Busy day 1 - things looking up

fgsteiner — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 17:06:05 +0000

Busy day to day.

Craig and I presented to make a short list for an Angel conference. Lets hope we were good enough. Got another introduction to a charity from one of the judges above… maybe they like what we do? Heard from one of the judges that one of our school targets does not like one of our features, we will investigate.. bit of surprise as we have not signed any schools yet but should do soon.

I spoke to one of our charities today and they like the new contract.. yeah, we shall get the contract back on Friday.. cross your fingers. Followed up with a long standing contact from last weeks Launch Party and they will inquire with their family if there is any interest with working with us in raising money for a large charity.

Passed our comments on the gift card market to our lawyer at McCarthys who may get us into a BiV article on a similar theme; been here before so it it happens great.. but these things are difficult to get right and fit with a journalists agenda.

New software features coming on every day… getting close to a site we really want.

Followed up with a few bloggers from Launch Party and Raul thanks for letting me know the name of the restaurant Red Sea Cafe and hope we can meet up to discuss the market soon

Busy, now my teeth have stopped hurting

Friendly help from lawyers

fgsteiner — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 19:58:28 +0000

It has been great that people have been so supportive and going further introducing their favourite charities (& contacts) to us. I met Scott Dunlop a lawyer from Davis LLP who works with BootUpLabs, one of our partners. He was very kind to make introductions to three charities that really fit. We will let you know how it goes.

Thanks Scott

Charities: Collect those Email Addresses

fgsteiner — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 05:18:30 +0000

We have been talking to a few charities and they keep coming back to us and saying they do not have much of a email list, further few are communicating in any regular way and when they do they do it is thru the post. This appears to be a very expensive and missed opportunity.

In our case, your cost of contacting the supporter base is close to zero and from the word go we can increase your returns over mail, becasue people can click straight thru from the email to a sign up page where they buy the Loyalty Card. Paper is complex, expensive and time consuming people have to keep the paper and type the details in … less chance of conversion. Further, all communication to be expensive and forces communication to be limited, email has no such limitations but you have to be careful in how and how frequently you communicate.

But the missed opportunity is even bigger, I met engage joe and he has built /showed me some simple tools for charities to raise money from emails as well as other types of online marketing. But without email there is little chance that many charities will be able to take advantage of this further, if charities are not collecting emails they are not likely to get/understand the other more sophisticated tools at their disposal. This is very unfortunate, as the money can be very easy to get.

So please collect emails.

Growing the market for charitable contributions

fgsteiner — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 04:34:35 +0000

I was having a discussion with some people from a charity organisation about the shape of the charity market and how there is a limited amount of funds for charitable contributions. This market was constrained as it was suggested that 25% of the population donates; it sounds right. As a result there was a fear that charities compete and they cannibalise the “supporters” or donations market. I was not sure that this was a large problem with all the new and old types of ways charities raise money. While the donations market is limited there is a larger market surrounding it which means there is really two markets here:

1) pure donation

2) normal purchases of products that people make, but in this case happens to benefit charities.

The first market is clear and well defined. A supporter gives money, gets a tax deduction and charity gets money.

The second market is not well defined and overlaps with the commercial market. In this market donor fatigue takes a long time to set in and for most consumers this budget is not part of their charity budget. For example, take a look at Christmas Cards or used books. Christmas Cards, I, like you, need them every year to send to friends, I can get them from the store or a charity.

If a charity reaches me first, I buy there. The money from this does not come out of my charity budget but my Christmas budget. I feel good that I know some money goes to the charity but it does not reduce my notional charity budget.

Similarly with used books, I buy what I want or need from Abebooks or a church sale, but when I buy from a church I again do not reduce my budget for charitable contributions, but my book budget is reduced.

Overall, yes the second market does reduce my disposal income but not to a degree that it effects the money I give to a charity. In this regard LetsGoForDinner.com will grow the market for charitable contributions because it does not consume the charity/donations budget.

Does this resonate or does someone have completely different data?

Cheers