TangoTab

TangoTab is an online social enterprise business that offers diners discounts at participating restaurants, and donates 20% of its gross revenues to the fight against hunger. Based in Dallas, Texas, TangoTab was officially launched in January 2012.

Business Model

TangoTab offers a service to restaurants that allows them to publish time and quantity limited offers through the TangoTab system. TangoTab promotes these offers through email, on their website, through their social media channels, and via their mobile applications to customers. Unlike deal sites such as Groupon, TangoTab does not sell vouchers, rather, the registered customer claims an offer for free to dine out. When a customer redeems a TangoTab deal, the restaurant gets business during anticipated slow times, and pays a small, flat referral fee to TangoTab. The restaurant is in-control of the promotion type.

The company added an iPhone app in March 2012, and Android and Facebook apps in August 2012.

Geographic Markets

The company launched in Dallas, Texas, New York City, Hoboken, New Jersey, Westchester County, New York, Chicago, Illinois, and Los Angeles, California, and expanded to Fort Worth, Texas and Oklahoma City, Oklahoma in June 2012.

Charitable Donations

TangoTab donates 20% of revenues to hunger-relief charities. In Dallas, proceeds have gone to Minnie's Food Pantry, the SoupMobile, the Allen Community Outreach, and to Meals on Wheels of Tarrant County. In Oklahoma City, donations have gone to Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma. In New York City, City Harvest has been The Primary Recipient of the company’s largess. In Chicago, the Northern Illinois Food Bank has benefited from TangoTab donations.

By October 2012, the company had donated the over 100,000 meals to food banks across the United States.

History

TangoTab was founded by telecom and Internet entrepreneur Andre Angel. Angel studied at the University of Toronto and played jazz piano at clubs. He observed that most restaurants do the bulk of their business on three days, leaving eateries under-attended for more than half the week. His pre-internet effort to get discounts from restaurants was unsuccessful.

In 2010, challenged by internet entrepreneur friends to give the concept another shot, Angel began thinking about ways to combine the idea of delivering business to restaurants with another passion of his, fighting hunger. The following year, he met Ken Kragen at the 2011 eWomen's Network Annual Conference in Dallas, who encouraged him to focus on hunger in the United States.

Alpha and beta testing took place in Dallas in 2011. Angel vowed to donate 25,000 meals to fight hunger before Christmas 2011. The donation was made in January 2012.