Garrett Pekarek

Hungry to help your community? There’s an app for that.

Garrett Pekarek, Department of Sociology (2026)

As a graduate student in sociology eager to do more than simply study social problems, I was intrigued when Andrew Glantz, CEO and founder of GiftAMeal, reached out in late 2022 about a Data & Marketing internship opportunity. At the time, I hadn’t yet heard of GiftAMeal or its mission to address food scarcity, but after a bit of digging I decided that an internship with the St. Louis-based startup would provide a unique opportunity to use my research skills, customer service experience, and curiosity to help support food banks in St. Louis and across the country.

For a bit of background, GiftAMeal is a program that donates one meal to a local food bank each time a user uploads a picture of their meal from a partner restaurant. Users can choose to share their posts to social media apps like Facebook and Instagram, and each share contributes an additional meal to the designated food bank. While GiftAMeal is primarily driven by mobile apps available to download for both iOS and Android users, the company also supports a download-free option which can be accessed by scanning a QR code at select locations. As of this writing, GiftAMeal has donated over 1.5 million meals to food banks across 35 states.

My title at GiftAMeal aptly described my duties working for the startup: my time was split between marketing efforts geared toward growing exposure to and awareness of the program and data-driven tasks focused on generating actionable insights and ensuring data cleanliness and integrity that would help keep things running smoothly. I spent a lot of time visiting partner restaurants, talking with owners, managers, and staff members to learn how users were interacting with GiftAMeal on the ground and provide marketing materials and informational updates that would ensure that customers visiting these restaurants could learn about GiftAMeal and feel comfortable participating. I also spent a good deal of time digging around in and helping to collect data–I cleaned datasets to prepare them for upload, edited proprietary assets to help facilitate the ongoing success of the program, and helped to build data-collection instruments that allow the team to learn how GiftAMeal users feel about the program and how the program itself can benefit partner restaurants and their employees.

I had no idea what it would be like to work with a startup, but one of the most crucial lessons I took away from the experience was the importance of moving quickly to try different things, learning from their success or failure, and immediately implementing what I learned in my next task or endeavor. In my graduate program, I have spent countless hours working to “perfect” a study design, or paper, or presentation, languishing over every minor detail until the very last minute and always wondering if I could have done something better. In my experience at GiftAMeal, Andrew championed a very different ethos: ask questions until you feel comfortable, give something your best attempt, evaluate what went well and what could have gone better, and move on to the next thing. In this way, interning at GiftAMeal has taught me something that I anticipate will prove valuable in both my academic and professional life, and I am grateful for the experience.

The next time you’re out to eat, get out your phone, download the GiftAMeal app, and snap a quick photo of your food. It only takes a second, but for food banks around the country and the people who rely on them, it makes a big difference.