Chewpons.com: a Daily Deals Startup in Baltimore

Baltimore-based startup Chewpons.com has launched their very first daily deal today, a 50% off coupon for $20 to Ciao Bella in Little Italy. Most are familiar with this type of business model: give your email to Chewpons and they will email you a new deal each day to a local food or drink business. The savings start out at least a 50% discount, sometimes even going up as much as 90% off.
Chewpons LLC is currently located in Reisterstown, MD, just minutes away from downtown Baltimore and has promised to only serve up local deals to businesses that are centered around food and drinks. They are clearly in the same space as websites like Groupon and Living Social (a successful daily deals startup from DC) but they hope to differentiate themselves by “offering a more local experience” says founder Adam Marks. He also points out another differentiating feature is that portions of each Chewpon that is sold will go to the charity of choice of the discounted business, or if one isn’t selected that same donation will end up going to the Maryland Food Bank, a partner of Chewpons.
Marks explains a little bit about the history of Chewpons on his website:

The Chewpons name was originally trademarked back in 2005 with the notion of offering consumers printable coupons to their favorite places to eat throughout the state of Maryland and beyond.
The idea and the name were pretty cool at the time, but we soon realized that online couponing had to evolve in order to be effective, so the Chewpons name became dormant until this past July 2010. It was then that we found several models of online couponing that made sense, but still felt the need to fill a niche not currently being offered to consumers, and also felt very strongly about giving back to the local community. After all, if the local community is kind enough to purchase something from our company, isn’t it just right that we give back to them as well?

Chewpons also offers referral credits with their unique “Chewbucks” program. It rewards existing users a $5 credit for each new member they refer.
Sign up today at http://Chewpons.com and help support not only local business owners but also a local startup!