Corporate dining program provider Dinova has expanded Alison Galik's role to CEO. She joined the company in 2018 as president, pushing rapid growth and technology enhancements. She continues to report to the board of directors. Dinova also appointed Verome Johnston CFO and John Leen chief revenue officer.
The company also has introduced two services for the corporate space: the Dinova Catering Portal and Dine Assist. The catering portal is a competitive response to mobile delivery services like DoorDash, Grubhub and Uber Eats. "Some of our customers came to us and said they were seeing rogue spend going to these delivery ordering systems rather than going through Dinova restaurants," said Galik. In those situations, she said, the delivery service instead of the restaurant becomes the merchant. That causes the corporation to lose out on their discounts.
In response, Dinova launched its own delivery portal Aug. 2 in Atlanta. It will expand to 24 cities in the U.S. by the end of 2019. The portal focuses on group catering. "We want to focus on the rollout for now, and then we'll look at flipping that switch" to individual dining, as well, said Galik. She added that off-premise dining is a huge growth area for restaurants and nearly all Dinova network participants have signed on to the option. "The other delivery services charge high fees for restaurants to participate. Our value proposition is different in that there's still a fee but there's a rebate passed on to the corporation. Plus, we continue to attract those higher-dollar [business dining] transactions."
Dinova also is focusing on meeting and event dining for the smaller meetings segment. "The last thing an ad hoc meeting organizer needs to worry about is figuring out that dinner event," said Galik, whose background includes meeting and event technologies Starcite and Lanyon. "Dine Assist is a free service that lets Dinova take that task off their plates. The user just fills out a form for private dining or dinner; it doesn't have to be private. The technology, combined with our team, brings the options back to the planner."
Longer-term goals for Dinova include expanded reporting capability, as well as expansion to international cities. "We have not done anything outside the U.S., and we are evaluating what markets should be next," said Galik, noting that the most obvious would be Canada, given the geographic overlap with Dinova's current restaurant network. She said the company also is looking at data to determine a possible path forward in Europe.
Regarding the expanded reporting, the catering portal could offer Dinova more detailed data, as Dinova becomes the merchant in those transactions. "We are exploring the technology to provide online dashboards to both the corporate buyer and our restaurant network," said Galik. "We are going to continue to invest in technology because we want to be the total dining solution for our customers."