Dine-a-Mate founder back with new offers

CNY Business Journal (1996+), Nov 19, 2004 by Dickinson, Casey J

BINGHAMTON - "Enjoy the City," the colorful new diningcoupon book, marks Dine-a-Mate founder Raymond Stanton II's re-entry into the two-for-one coupon book market. Stanton, a retired school principal from the Binghamton area, started his original coupon book with his wife Nikki back in the 1970s when he helped raise money for his school's sports programs.

The new Enjoy the City coupon book is a wide format, slickpaper version that features bright color photographs. The coupon book's premise of getting two meals for the price of one sparked Stanton's marketing tool for the $25 Enjoy the City books.

"Now I sell the books two-for-one as well," he explains.

Stanton's company, Binghamton-based Enjoy the City, Inc., sells its coupon books in 23 markets covering 11 states. including Texas and Florida.

Restaurant coupon books are commonly sold through schools during the fall months to raise money for student activities. The books provide buy one, get one free deals at restaurants and a broad range of firms including hotels and car-rental companies.

Enjoy the City, like the Stantons' previous enterprise, is a family affair. Stanton's daughter Anne, a graduate of Harvard Business School, serves as chief executive officer of the company. His son, Raymond III, serves on the board of Enjoy the City and operates his own computer-data company. Raymond II and Nikki Stanton have six children and 27 grandchildren

Stanton's first company, Dine-a-Mate, grew from a local school fundraiser into a multi-million dollar enterprise that he sold to Cendant Corp. in 1996 for $36 million in Cendant stock. He kept his teaching job until 1990, when Raymond III persuaded him to expand the business nationwide.

"Since I was giving up years of service toward my retirement," says Stanton, "I told him we'd really have to make this work."

Stanton and his son did make the business work, expanding across the country over the next six years." At the time of the sale to Cendant, Stanton's company sold coupon books in 36 markets and produced annual revenue of $15 million.

A non-compete agreement with Cendant kept Stanton out of the couponbook business for five years. After the agreement expired in 2001, Stanton and his children created a new company and the new book.

Fundraising groups can make up to half the book's $25 cover price in sales commissions, depending on their sales volume. The minimum fundraising return is $7 per book.

The Enjoy the City coupon book contains thousands of dollars in potential discounts on restaurants, products, and services.

"People make the cost back the first time they use it," says Stanton.

Restaurants pay nothing to appear in the book, he explains. The businesses only have to provide the "two-for-one" meal if someone comes in with a coupon. The books are a good way to build customer traffic and familiarity, Stanton adds.

Stanton created Dine-a-Mate to help sports teams and other school activities to raise funds. He recognized the inflated prices of candy sales and the limited market potential of items such as candles and magazine subscriptions. After seeing a restaurant coupon book in Syracuse, Stanton decided to create a similar product for Broome County businesses.

Stanton named his original company "Dine-a-Mate" after hearing comedian J.J. Walker's then-current exclamation "Dyno-mite!" Walker portrayed the teenage son on the 1970s television show "Good Times."

"It was popular, and you needed a mate to make the two-forone deal work," explains Stanton.

While he worked as a teacher and later as a principal, Stanton spent his summer months signing up restaurants and setting the book up for printing. Each fall he delivered the books to groups across Broome County and eventually across the country.

Pasta restaurants were the first to sign on, Stanton recalls, because owners didn't think they had much to lose by providing two meals for the price of one. In 1978, he faced a revolt from restaurant owners when he decided to add fastfood coupons to the growing book.

"They didn't want to be in the same book as McDonald's and Burger King," he says.

Instead of being a disaster, the addition of fast food caused sales to jump along with coupon usage for all the restaurants in the Dine-a-Mate.

"Fast food really helped things take off," says Stanton.

He believes the fast-food coupons fit well with the sportsteam families that sold, bought, and used the Dine-a-Mate books, creating crossover for sit-down restaurants.

Later Stanton added retail shops and other non-restaurant businesses, growing the book ever-thicker each year.

Enjoy the City has limited the number of coupons in its books, Stanton explains, adopting the reverse approach of the company he sold out to in 1996. While the Entertainment Guide books look like a large paperback, Enjoy the City contains fewer coupons and is shaped more like a thinner, wide-format "trade paperback."

"We wanted to include only the best deals we could get, instead of putting everything in," he adds.