An App That Lets Restaurant Goers Turn a Good Deal Into a Good Deed
TangoTab is an app that lets restaurants offer targeted deals to local customers and feeds one person in need for every meal served.
“More than one billion meals are served in restaurants every week and more than 50 million people go to bed hungry.”
This is the statistic quoted by Steve Scamihorn, Digital Marketing Manager for TangoTab, an app that helps restaurants fill empty tables with local customers and lets customers find great restaurant deals near them.
TangoTab’s Founder and CEO Andre Angel was a musician who played clubs in Toranto and noticed many nights he played to an empty house. According to Scamihorn, Angel was already cooking up ideas to help restaurants when he was volunteering in a Texas food bank. Then he realized he could help restaurants and address the issue of hunger in the local community at the same time.
Here’s how it works: Restaurants use TangoTab’s geo-targeted app, which is available for iPhone and Android devices, to make special offers and when a customer redeams the offer, TangoTab feeds a person in need.
According to Jonathan Seyoum, a partner at the Original Pancake House in Dallas, the commitment to fighting hunger is exactly what sold him on using the service. When he took a closer look though, he discovered that TangoTab was a great alternative to services like Groupon and LivingSocial.
“We became excited about our ability to control the offers through focusing discounts and invitations on ‘soft’ revenue times,” he says, adding that the technology also enabled them to connect with a young, tech savvy market.
Scamihorn says that in addition to being able to redeem a deal in advance, consumers like TangoTab because they get to contribute to the fight against hunger through “personal philanthropy.”
“One of our slogans is that customers can turn a good deal into a good deed,” he says.
It might seem like TangoTab has tough competition, especially with Foursquare billing its self-service advertising platform as a way to help local businesses get customers in the door. However, Scamihorn says ads are essentially coupons and TangoTab’s commitment to social good is it’s ultimate selling point.
In the end, he says, this is why he believes the TangoTab user base is so active and growing. “We don’t just donate cash. We volunteer in soup kitchens and food banks too. We’re also hyperlocal, so we donate where the deals are made.”
