DapIt Featured on Comstock Magazine as Local App During Pandemic

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DapIt Featured on Comstock Magazine

Cesar Torres • Mar 06, 2020

Why it's important to support local businesses.

With gift cards, both physical and digital, continuing to soar in popularity, DapIt, a Woodland-based startup, aims to bring their convenience to small businesses while cutting down on plastic.

“We want to give small businesses like us a way to fight Amazon, Target, those giants who are just making more and more money,” says cofounder Pauline Torres, who launched the startup in 2018 with her husband, Cesar Torres. “Small businesses don’t have the money to fund an app.”

The idea for the DapIt app came in 2017, when the couple was on vacation for Cesar’s birthday. Friends in other places wanted to buy them a drink or appetizer remotely. But the restaurant had no options for receiving gifts. They did research, saw a business opportunity and jumped on it.

The Torres’ raised about $190,000 from family and friends to produce the first version of the app. With a subscription fee of $5 a month, businesses can be on the DapIt network, where customers anywhere can buy their digital gift cards. (Businesses also pay 9.9 percent per transaction fee, which includes the services of DapIt and Stripe secure processing.) The business owner must complete the information to enroll and be verified on the DapIt app. For larger businesses, the owner can set up a store manager to have employees do approvals.

As of January, 75 businesses were signed up, mostly in Woodland, and the Torreses plan to expand the network to Sacramento and beyond. This year, the Torreses hope to raise at least $1 million to ramp up. Currently, they have a patent pending for what the app does. But the team is just the two of them, Cesar says, “fighting for this dream of helping small businesses.”

Support also comes through the DapIt app network. For instance, when a business is featured in the news, the app can promote the story and help spread the word. Also, instead of using a website that sells tickets for a business, the business can create a social media event that allows buyers to get tickets directly through the app.

Ultimately, the plan is to expand DapIt nationally. Since launching, Pauline says, they have had businesses reach out from Florida and Pennsylvania, but they started in Yolo County, so the majority of businesses are from there. But potential customers can be from anywhere — that’s what makes DapIt special, says Juan Barajas, co-owner of Savory Café in Woodland. “DapIt has allowed our business to see any user of a cell phone in Fresno, California or Shanghai as a potential customer of Savory Café,” he says.

Kellie Morgan, owner of Yolo Eats, which runs three restaurants in Woodland, was one of the initial investors in DapIt, and she has been on the network for about a year. Her restaurants still use physical gift cards, she says, but the DapIt app makes it more convenient for customers.

“It’s not like a card at your house that you can forget,” Morgan says. “You can easily access it when you’re out and about. If you’ve got money to spend on it, you know where to go to do that. It pulls different people in that might not have come in otherwise.”

Morgan looks forward to seeing the app evolve with potential features, such as pop-up ads that say, “Hey, you’re near a place that uses DapIt!” But what she likes the most is that DapIt caters to establishments that can’t afford to spend a lot on marketing. “The big draw was the fact it felt like it was built for small- to- medium businesses,” Morgan says. “In our town, quite a few people use it and we’re all supporting each other.”

Written by: By Russell Nichols | https://www.comstocksmag.com/web-only/startup-month-dapit?fbclid=IwAR0ymcDM3SCmURVgBARZH9Kp4Ok685-1YvZzZNqR8jPt-ONyja0uQ-LqE4w

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DapIt - Discover Amazing Places In Town. But since the Covid-19, it has stood for "Discover Amazing People In Town." Through all this, there has been some fantastic support from the community. Early on, when we started the 5-5-5 challenge, you answered the call by buying near $20k in gift cards from local businesses. Because of all of you, this was a huge success! It brings a tear to my eye, just thinking about it. We then had some fantastic support from companies like Yolo Federal Credit Union , who bought gift cards for all their employees. What a great way to show your community that we are all in this together. We have seen schools like Woodland Christian School buy gift cards for all the teachers on the teacher's appreciation day. What a great thing to do. And a way to thank the teachers that lives have changed during this time. Building DapIt was just an idea about a year and a half ago, and now it is creating a new way for businesses to grow and for customers to share and support favorite companies. I want to thank not only all of the businesses, customers, community; I also want to thank those that work in the background. While they put in long hours, making sure we keep on track to communicating with everyone, sharing special moments, and creating new ways to promote local happenings. I am so proud of our team for all the help and support and everything that they do. Let's keep working together; this is the only way we can overcome the challenges we are facing. How we are changing the way we do business. DapIt started as a way for businesses to make it accessible for customers to buy gift cards. DapIt has also made it possible to share your favorite places. Now customers are using DapIt as a contact-free payment. As we grow, this has been amazing to watch. So we want to let you know we are making some new updates. Some of which will be much easier for customers to support local businesses. Businesses have also created some new ways of using DapIt. A great way to pay for items when streaming live on Facebook or Instagram and creating exclusive giveaways to reward customers. I would like to use " Las Brasas " as a great example. They recently had a Cinco de Mayo idea that they wanted to implement. So they contacted us to see if we could help them create a creative drive-up and pick-up food event. We helped put together a pre-order form and some social media posts. They used this as a way to get some pre-orders to help expedite and improve boost sales. The result was an event that was a huge success. We watched and worked that day assisting Rudy (owner of Las Brasas), and we took notes and ideas on how we can improve the app. Because of you, "The Businesses," we are going to add a new Tip Feature, and a new create your gift cards feature. Want to get involved? Help us support businesses and give to those in need. We setup a donate account to help us give to those in need. Currently Savory Cafe is re-connecting with those in the food industry. Click here to find out more. If you need help putting together a promotion or want to work together. Please email us at info@dapitapp.com .