click to enlarge - File: Jeb Wallace-Brodeur
- The Localvore app being used to redeem a Vermont Everyone Eats meal in 2022
Twelve years after the launch of a local version of Groupon that offered dining deals at Vermont restaurants, Michael Nedell, the lone remaining cofounder, said he is reinvigorating the Localvore app and exploring new uses for it.
Localvore was founded in 2012 as Localvore Today by Nedell, Dan White and Meg Randall, who raised $3.4 million in funding, mostly from Vermont-based investors, Nedell said. By the end of 2019, by his account, the platform had 50,000 consumers on its email lists and was active in Burlington and Portland, Maine, with plans to expand to Boston. Nedell said 140 businesses used the platform to offer discounted meals or other deals to draw customers.
Localvore was billed as a positive way for diners to find meals that matched their preferences. According to a 2017 Seven Days story, the company "aim[ed] to be the anti-Yelp."
But success remained elusive, said Nedell, who described himself as "the tech guy" among the founders. Neither a consumer nor a restaurant subscription model generated significant revenue, and the company began exploring other models.
During the pandemic, the Localvore app operated as the digital voucher system for Vermont Everyone Eats, a federally and state-funded free meals program. Over two and a half years, Nedell said, "We facilitated 1.4 million meals."
When that program ended in March 2023, he continued, "We found it difficult to go back to the old market."
In early June, Nedell notified the 38,000 addresses that remain on the company's list that Localvore had officially dissolved but that one of its lenders had returned the tech assets to him. He has sent out a few contest and deal emails while working on strategies for taking the platform forward.
Nedell said he still sees opportunities to develop alternatives to global social media and other corporate-owned systems that extract money from local companies. For example, he estimates that Vermont restaurants pay credit card processing fees of $84,000 "every damn day."
"My interest in Localvore is to plug the gaps in local economies," Nedell said.