2 Seniors start Bloomington Grub Club membership card

Seniors Robert Demaree and David Cavise said they wanted to develop a concept for a coupon where there was value for the restaurant, customers and themselves.

That is how Grub Club came to be.

“T.I.S. gives you coupons every year but they sit in a drawer and you don’t use them,” Demaree said.

Cavise argued that it wasn’t about the form of the T.I.S. coupons, but because their coupon values were not good enough. And the “free appetizer with any entree” coupons don’t work either, Cavise said.

“It doesn’t necessarily get you in the door, so we asked ourselves how do we get people in the door?”

Their answer to this question was the Grub Club card. Costing $20, Demaree and Cavise said the customer is actually receiving food valued at around $75 with tax.

For $20 the cardholder is able to get a special deal at 10 different Bloomington restaurants. The cardholder can only use the card at each restaurant once. So once they order, the restaurant will scratch off their circle on the card.

There are a total of 1,500 cards available, which Cavise said was a reasonable number to request of food for each restaurant to give away. Demaree and Cavise were the ones who selected local restaurants for the cards.

“We went to 12 restaurants, and 10 committed at the first meeting,” Cavise said.
Each cardholder has a member number, so when they buy the card, they receive a brochure and wallet-sized card with information on the restaurants.

Cavise and Demaree said they also ask that anyone purchasing the card fill out a survey answering whether they have eaten at any of the participating restaurants before.

“The real value we get from selling the cards is the information we collect from the restaurants,” Cavise said. He and Demaree will receive feedback from students after they have used their entire card via emails.

They will use that information to see how effective the cards are in getting people who have never eaten at the restaurants to return or not.

“The underlying concept is that a customer who regularly eats at Dats or Soup On is getting free food from eight other restaurants when otherwise they would have stepped into a different restaurant,” Demaree said.

Cavise and Demaree hired other students as representatives to help them advertise and sell the cards by working with social media.

Grub Club already has a Facebook and twitter account, @BtownGrubClub, that representatives will update telling people where they can purchase the cards.

“It’s to get kids who are already in love with Uncle D’s, but who haven’t heard of Fortune Cookies,” Demaree said. “We’re tapping into every network.”

Demaree and Cavise said they have been friends since the fourth grade and started a business together in high school selling campus textbooks cheaper.

“We are fans of do it yourself,” Cavise said. “We like the control and that you can make your own decisions.”

Demaree said he and Cavise are constantly bouncing ideas back and forth about business opportunities.

“This is ours and we can claim it,” Demaree said. “All the late night talks are coming to life.”