Restaurant rewards startup Mogl has launched a new app that will make it even easier for users to get cash back or donate meals to local food banks. With the launch of the app, the startup is also opening its service up nationwide for any market where it can find 100 local users and five restaurants interested in participating in its program.
Mogl has a drop-dead simple model for earning rewards, especially compared to some other loyalty apps out there. Users simply connect their debit and credit cards, and every time they pay for a check at a participating bar or restaurant, they earn 10 percent cash back.
If users have the app installed, they'll be notified via push notification. (Even if they've deleted the app, once their accounts are linked, they'll begin getting cash back without even realizing it.) But anyway, the push notification serves a different purpose: Once users see how much they've earned, they can either elect to keep the cash, or donate it to charity - in this case, local food banks.
According to CEO and co-founder Jon Carder, it costs just 20 cents for each meal served at a local food bank. And so, for each 20 cents you earn back, you can contribute that to meals for hungry people nearby. Once a person's preference for how much to give back - or keep for themselves - is stored, the app will automatically register that same percentage in the future, unless a user elects to change it.
In addition to the money donated to local food banks, 10 percent of all proceeds also go to Virgin Unite - the charitable arm of Richard Branson's Virgin Group. That organization is devoted to investing in sustainable solutions to the world's hunger problem.
Currently in more than 1,800 restaurants in California and Arizona, Mogl also wants to open up nationwide. But to do that in a scalable way, it's relying on users and restaurants to let it know where to go next. In any city where 100 users download the app and it gets at least five restaurants interested in participating, it'll open up shop.
So what's the pitch to restaurants? Mogl users apparently spend around 45 percent more per month at participating restaurants, so it's not too much of a stretch for them to give 10 percent back, right? Since being founded, Mogl has given $3.5 million back to users and had more than 550,000 meals donated, but the latest update to the app will hopefully increase that amount.
