David Laiderman: Hungry Media Chews Through The College Market Into Mainstream

Food and Beverage Magazine headed to Hard Rock Hotel to meet up with David Laiderman, founder of Hungry Media. In town on business, Laiderman made time to sit and tell us the history and future growth plans of Hungry Media. We quickly learned that business is something he knows very well and almost never sleeps. A rising enterprise CEO, Laiderman, co-founded a company in college and evolved it into a media powerhouse for restaurants. That’s the brief version. Hearing it from Laiderman, in full, it was hard not to be in awe of how amazing and remarkable his journey has been.

David attended Penn State – doubled majored in Management & International Business with a minor in Engineering. In 2003, while in college, he co-founded Ynot Advertising and Lionmenus.com. The idea- somewhat simple. The result- cutting edge marketing that expanded the hyper-local website model to over 15 college markets. Fast forward to 2009, Laiderman purchased 50% of the territories from Ynot and founded College Advertising Solutions to expand upon existing relationships and sales opportunities. He increased sales by marketing, traveling to meet with restaurants, and building local marketing teams within each territory. He traveled for 4 years meeting with restaurants all over the country discussing online marketing strategy and tech development. While at the same time, learning the needs of the restaurateur in order to help build a better mouse trap with them. Now, in 2013, Laiderman founded Hungry Media in order to leverage the existing relationships and resources to become a leading digital agency for single store and small chain restaurants. Hungry Media is an evolution and merging of multiple technology and marketing companies that all specifically service this restaurant community. The common goals of each company is to provide restaurants with more advanced products and services to help them market better to their local communities. Helping his partners compete against the multi-unit chains in their markets. His sales approach is relationship focused and centers around educating restaurants about the fast paced digital market and how they can use it to their advantage. Simply put, College Advertising Solutions connects college based restaurants with college students that are looking food, while Hungry Media connects restaurants nationwide with their local customers.