Dinner Lab Raises A $7M Series A To Expand Its Social Dining Club

Dinner Lab, a membership-based club that gives you access to private dinner parties in unique locations throughout your city, announced it is has raised a $7 million Series A led by James River Capital.

The company also received follow-up funding from all current investors, including Dr. John B. Elstrott, the chairman of the board of Whole Foods. This latest round comes about a year after Dinner Lab raised $2.1 million in seed funding.

Here’s how Dinner Lab works: Born out of New Orleans, the company hosts dinners multiple times a month in over 30 cities. These dinners are held in unique locations like warehouses or helipads, and the food is prepared by up and coming chefs that may not yet run their own restaurant or kitchen.

Each dinner is typically under 120 people, and for this privilege the company charges about $65 per person, which comes with unlimited drinks. This per-meal fee is on top of an annual fee of around $150 per year, which gives members access to the calendar of events in their respective cities.

Zach Kupperman, co-founder of Dinner Lab, explained that while the company does make a little money off the events themselves, most of the company’s profit is comes from the yearly membership fees.

Kupperman told TechCrunch that the company will use the new funding to continue its expansion across U.S markets.

Additionally, the funding will help expand Dinner Lab’s B2B side of the business, which hosts events for corporations, makes sponsorship deals and offers corporate memberships for employees.

According to the company, Dinner Lab now has about 25,000 members, and will host enough events this year to make it the largest culinary events company in the world.