In 2016, 41.2 million people lived in food-insecure households in the United States, meaning they were uncertain of having, or unable to acquire enough food to meet the needs of all their members because they had insufficient money or other resources for food, according to the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) most recent statistics.  Conversely, millions of photos of food are shared on social media every day. What if this obsession with posting food photos could somehow be leveraged to help feed people in need?

Entrepreneurs Andrew Glantz, 23, and Aidan Folbe, 20, have done just that. They have provided more than 100,000 meals to people in need through GiftAMeal, a mobile app startup they co-founded in 2015.  

The concept is amazingly simple. Download the free app to an Android or iOS device, visit a participating restaurant, check in on the app, take a photo and, voilà: A monetary donation is made to an area food bank that results in a meal being provided to someone in need.Even better, if you share your photo on social media, the donation increases resulting in a second meal furnished. Share it on two sites, say Facebook and Instagram, and two additional meals are provided.

So how does GiftAMeal, a for-profit business, derive its revenue? 

To be listed on the app and GiftAMeal website, participating restaurants pay a monthly fee ranging from $49 for a basic subscription to $149 for the highest platinum level. The restaurants derive benefit from the additional social media attention generated by app users and from being included in GiftAMeal’s digital marketing. 

In addition, restaurants receive tabletop tents, signs and other marketing materials. They also receive personalized marketing advice and support from the GiftAMeal team, which in addition to Glantz, co-founder and CEO, and Folbe, co-founder and chief operating officer, includes Chief Marketing Officer Jacob Mohrmann and Michael Kaushansky, head of business development.

Vietnam Style, located at 6100 Delmar Blvd. on the eastern edge of the Loop, is a platinum level GiftAMeal partner. Owner Thao Truong says she immediately saw the potential of the program. 

“GiftAMeal helps me earn more active customers, such as college students,” she said. “They also provided us with tabletop displays and window and door signs. They worked together with us in using social media to create events and campaigns to attract more customers. My subscription is worth every penny.” 

Getting millennial support in fight against hunger

More than 100 restaurants are on the app, and that number is growing by the day, Glantz said. In addition to St. Louis, GiftAMeal operates in Chicago and Detroit and is considering  expansion into other markets.

The meals generated by app users are distributed by GiftAMeal’s food bank partners, which in St. Louis is Operation Food Search. The organization was attracted to GiftAMeal because “the app targets the hard-to-reach millennial demographic in a way that hits all of the key attributes of this population,” said Judy Coyman, director of community relations. “The app is fun, it has a philanthropic bent, it is portable and it is sharable.” 

While GiftAMeal is a for-profit marketing business, she said, “the giving-back model has high appeal beyond millennials,  really to anyone. It’s universal.”

Operation Food Search, a privately funded organization, is grateful for the consistent stream of donations it receives from GiftAMeal, Coyman said. In addition to keeping day-to-day operations running, “these donations allow us to expand our efforts to feed more children and their families in unique, targeted ways that lift the overall vibrancy of our region,” she said.

The GiftAMeal app has about 12,500 GiftAMeal users, about 75 percent of whom are in St. Louis. Nina Nepa, who is in the key millennial demographic, learned of the app after receiving a flyer from Glantz at a summer festival.  

“I downloaded the app because it was free and I had the chance to speak with Andrew about it after receiving the flyer,” Nepa said. “His dedication to fighting hunger really spoke for itself. I downloaded it right then and there.”

What Nepa likes most about the GiftAMeal app is the ability to see the charity her meal will be supporting. 

“I feel better about eating out because I know that it can benefit so much more than just me,” she said.

Nepa said she hopes more St. Louis area restaurants will jump on board. 

“They will be helping those in need and will get more business,” she said. “It’s really a win for everyone, and that’s what I love so much about GiftAMeal.”

Growing up with ‘Jewish values’

With the success of their GiftAMeal business model, Glantz and Folbe are proving that a for-profit company can “do well by doing good.” Creating a socially responsible business was paramount to both of them and was a natural extension of their upbringings in active Jewish households in Los Angeles and Detroit, respectively. They both cited their parents as role models in giving back to the community.  

Glantz recalls accompanying his mother on her visits with a volunteer reading program. In high school, he served as vice president of Junior Variety for four years and raised $300,000 for the organization, primarily through a Kids for Kids Carnival fundraiser.  He would go door-to-door to restaurants and stores soliciting donations, which he views now as a foreshadowing of GiftAMeal. 

As a counselor at Camp Harmony, a one-week summer camp in Los Angeles for underprivileged and homeless children, Glantz saw a need to serve older children who either missed or aged out of that experience, so he persuaded the Board of Junior Variety to fund a winter camp program for those youth.

Folbe is a graduate of Frankel Jewish Academy in Detroit. During his high school years, he volunteered at the Friendship Circle of Michigan, a nonprofit providing support and assistance to individuals with special needs. He also donated time to the First Tee, a youth development program that uses golf to build character and promote positive life choices.  

Glantz and Folbe also honed their entrepreneurial spirit at an early age. While attending Washington University as an undergraduate student, Glantz became a co-owner and director of business development of a student-run business, Sharing With a Purpose (SWAP). It promotes the reuse and free exchange of goods and services among students out of a storefront called the Trading Post.  

Folbe launched a business in high school. He partnered with a friend to found Bagel Boys Delivery, a venture that distributed bagels, cream cheese and lox every Sunday morning to more than 100 customers in his neighborhood. Clientele were primarily busy families with kids attending Hebrew and religious school.

Investing bar mitzvah money 

The business partners met while both were summer interns at Navitas, a boutique venture capital firm in Los Angeles.  At the time, Glantz was a full-time undergraduate student at Washington University. and Folbe was still in high school in Detroit.  During lunch breaks at nearby restaurants, they observed that most of the proprietors were not capitalizing on their most valuable assets: their customers.  

The pair initially discussed creating a mobile app that would allow customers, particularly millennials, to promote restaurants to their friends through the app and on social media. As they continued to refine their business model, they took into account that millennials, in addition to loving to post and share food photos on social media, also care deeply about a business’ social responsibility.  

With that, the GiftAMeal model was born. 

Glantz and Folbe each invested all of their bar mitzvah gift money to launch the company. The business, initially called FoodShare, later rebranded as GiftAMeal “to more effectively communicate our mission to our users, restaurants, and community,” according to Glantz. An early Kickstarter campaign was funded at 285 percent, raising $5,700. As the business gained momentum, the pair entered various student entrepreneurial competitions, which led to $20,000 in grant and award funding.  These early successes ultimately led to a $50,000 investment from Capital Innovators business accelerator program. 

Glantz, who graduated magna cum laude from Washington University last May with a bachelor’s degree in leadership and strategic management and a minor in political science, is focused full time on growing GiftAMeal.  

Folbe is a junior at Dartmouth College, where he is focusing on environmental studies and film. He works remotely during the school year, carefully juggling his studies with his  responsibilities at GiftAMeal, and spends his summers working with Glantz in St. Louis. The company operates out of the Cortex Innovation Community in midtown St. Louis. 

Glantz and Folbe were and are active in Jewish life on campus.  Glantz participated in the Jewish Leadership Experience program during his freshman year at WashU.  Folbe likes to attend Shabbat services and dinners at Dartmouth Hillel and Chabad.  Both are alumni of Birthright Israel.

A for-profit for the community

Now that GiftAMeal has surpassed its initial goal of providing 100,000 meals by the end of 2017, the company is looking to provide 250,000 meals by the end this year.  Glantz and Folbe also are seeking a second round of funding in order to improve the user experience on the app and create a repeatable and scalable sales process.

“We are currently solidifying our current markets and conducting market research for future expansion cities,” Glantz said.  

He plans to keep the company’s headquarters in St. Louis because he says the community has always been supportive and has worked hard to create a good environment for young millennial tech businesses. He is passionate about continuing to refine and improve his business model.  

“I try to have five-to-eight meetings a week with smart thought leaders,” he said. 

He also spends time in the community speaking about GiftAMeal and business social responsibility to groups ranging from college business clubs and entrepreneurial organizations to Audubon Associates, a new St. Louis association for philanthropic, civic-minded investors.  

It should come as no surprise that Glantz’s favorite motivational quote comes from businessman and investor Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks and co-owner of AXS TV: “Work like there is someone working 24 hours a day to take it away from you.”

Coyman, of Operation Food Search, sums it up best: “GiftAMeal exemplifies a business committed to community investment to lift up those who need our collective help the most. We as a community ‘win’ with their continuing success.”  

The GiftAMeal app is available for free download on Apple and Android devices or by visiting giftameal.com.