Dinner Lab Scoops Up 'Food Crawl' Startup Dishcrawl In a Push to Get More Customers The growing food events business says the acquisition is both to grow its customer base and a sign that it intends to expand its product offerings.
By Catherine Clifford •
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On the heels of closing a $7 million funding round food-event company Dinner Lab has started to eat other startups.
The New Orleans-based business just announced it has acquired culinary community company Dishcrawl. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Buying Dishcrawl advances Dinner Lab's current mission to grow its customer base.
"One of the biggest things that Dishcrawl brings to the table for us is the ability to get our current product into the hands of more people," says Brian Bordainick, CEO and founder of Dinner Lab. "They've done a great job of establishing a strong base of users that enjoy culinary experiences so we can expose our product offering to them."
Related: 120,000 Miles Later, Dinner Lab Lands a Fresh Round of Funding
Before being acquired, the San Jose, Calif-based startup hosted food crawls, with users in 250 cities in the U.S. and Canada. A food crawl, similar to the more popular "bar crawl," involves going to different eateries for different courses. In a food crawl, a group might go to one restaurant for an appetizer, another for a main meal and a third for the dessert. Dinner Lab says it may begin to offer these sorts of "food crawls" in the future.
"We love having a different event offering and knowledge of how to do those as part of our knowledge as a company," says Bordainick of the food crawl type of event. "We are looking to potentially bring those in house down the road, but are going to take our time in rolling those out."
This expansion is just the latest for Dinner Lab. When the company launched in 2011, it was initially imagined to be a late-night supper club for New Orleans foodies. In the past four years, a lot has changed. The roving late-night eatery became a membership-based pop-up dinner experience and rapidly expanded across the country. Then, catering became a significant arm of Dinner Lab's revenue stream. And over a month ago, Dinner Lab dropped that membership paywall in an effort to triple attendance.
Related: Dinner Lab Drops Its Membership Paywall as It Looks to Triple Attendance
