Oodles Corporation

School’s Back In Session

founder @ Oodles Corporation

Published on Sep 19, 2021

Hello Wefunder Investors,

We’ve now almost concluded the eleventh month since the WeFunder third round financing was closed. As in previous months, I wanted to provide you with an update on the many things happening with the OodlesDeals mobile app, and overall at the company.

As I write this update, CSU - Chico, CSU - Sacramento, UC - Berkeley, DePaul University and Loyola University are back in session. UC - Davis and Northwestern University begin Fall ’21 classes next week, and U of O - Eugene the following week. By the end of September, all eight locations where the OodlesDeals app is available will be back, with students on campus in-person.

The Delta variant of the COVID-19 virus continues to drive daily infections and hospitalizations at a growing rate, and as a result, all campuses have made student- and staff-vaccination a requirement to be on campus, and have also instituted mandatory mask-wearing and on-campus testing mandates. Limited capacity indoor-dining, outdoor dining, and pick-up are available to consumers in all of these geographies.

Transaction Month-on-Month Growth

As I mentioned in the July ’21 monthly update, the OodlesDeals sales team instituted a transaction-only billing to our customers in the month of August. Based on the transaction activity we’ve experienced, we see that at-restaurant dining trends are slowly returning since bottoming in mid-August, following the spike in Delta variant I referred to earlier. Pro-rated transactions for the month of September ’17, are running at 25% - 30% higher than in August.

Back To School Student Focused Events

Starting next week, the OodlesDeals marketing team is executing a series of “Back To School” Events in three of the key geographies where OodlesDeals is available — Chico, Davis and Evanston. Working with restaurant partners in each of these localities, as well as prominent groups on campus, social media and e-mail campaigns are being executed, establishing contact with these previously loyal students, and bringing them back to eat at their restaurants, in many cases 1 1/2 years since the Covid-19 Pandemic began.

This is a perfect complement to the “Culinary Passport” campaign the OodlesDeals Marketing Team executed in August, to long-time (non-student) customers of these restaurants, who had also in many cases not been to the restaurant for 1 1/2 years.

Here are examples of the Culinary Passport event, held in August, and the Back To School Event, being held in September:

As you know, the SCORCHER process of enabling users to invite others and spend time together is a patent protected one, and is what makes the OodlesDeals app truly unique and added-value to use.

Viant Process Update

In my August ’21 monthly update, I mentioned that the Oodles management team continued holding discussions with several interested partners and/or acquirers of the Company, in conjunction with Viant Capital, the investment bank the Company enlisted in April ’21. There has been no progress to report on this month.

Risks continue to stay high, and our current projection remains that we can operate under this plan through the end of September, given the Company’s cash in-hand.

This next statement is the same one I’ve made in the past, and remains true — Asheesh, the entire management team and I owe our sincere thanks to all of you.

Sajal Sahay, 

Co-founder & CEO

Liked by Anil Kapoor