Dinova

About Dinova

Dinova operates a proprietary marketplace focused on the business dining sector, connecting corporate clients with a vast network of restaurants across the United States and Canada. The company was founded in 2009 by Vic Macchio, a veteran of the travel industry with extensive experience at American Express. Macchio identified corporate dining as a significantly undermanaged expense category within corporate travel and entertainment (T&E) and established Dinova to address this gap. The company's first full year of operation was 2010, and it has since grown to include nearly 600 corporations, government agencies, and businesses, with a network of over 24,000 restaurants.

The business model is designed to be mutually beneficial for both corporate clients and restaurant partners. For corporations, Dinova provides a free-to-join program that offers increased visibility into dining expenditures, policy compliance, and cost savings through rebates. Companies can earn back up to 10% of their total dining spend. The service integrates with existing corporate expense management platforms like Concur, TripKicks, and Emburse Go, making it seamless for businesses to adopt. For employees, Dinova offers tools like a mobile app to locate in-network restaurants and an opt-in rewards program, myDinova, where they can earn points redeemable for gift cards. This incentivizes employees to dine at preferred locations, which cover various needs from client dinners and office catering to team-building events.

For restaurants, Dinova functions as a pay-for-performance B2B marketing channel that drives high-value corporate diners, particularly during the slower midweek periods. Restaurants join the network at no upfront cost and pay Dinova a commission or loyalty fee only on actual transactions generated through the platform. The process is designed to be operationally invisible, requiring no new hardware, POS integration, or special coupons, as it relies on analyzing corporate credit card data to track spending. This model provides restaurants with incremental revenue from business diners, who typically have higher check averages than leisure customers. Dinova's platform supports various dining occasions, including transient meals, catering, and private events, effectively functioning as an outsourced B2B strategy for its restaurant partners.