Local Resident Eyes Markets for Daily Deals Site

Adam Marks trademarked the name Chewpons in 2005, but it wasn’t until this past December that he officially launched the website.

“I decided I wanted to do something with Chewpons since it’s a great name and I’d seen all the other [daily deals sites],” he said. “I made it a daily deal model [and] added some twists to it.”

With years of sales and marketing experience under his belt, including stints at CBS radio, Google and Comcast, he came up with a plan to set himself apart from his competitors.

His site focuses on food and drink deals in the Baltimore metro area, but each restaurant gets to choose a charity to donate part of the proceeds to.

“It’s often something that’s close to them,” Marks said. “They might have a family with diabetes or a kid with autism. It’s a big deal to them.”

Marks, who grew up in Pikesville, has lived in Reisterstown for the past nine years. He spent months getting ready to launch the site, building a database and creating a restaurant line-up for his deals, which have included a variety of area establishments. Reisterstown restaurant , Owings Mills restaurants , Lenny’s Deli and , and Pikesville restaurant have been featured in the site’s deals.

In the spring, Marks plan to expand his site to Florida and the Eastern Shore.

“Easter Shore was just a natural transition because I can market to my Baltimore database,” he said. “There’s not a lot of competition down there yet for this kind of thing.”

He has a friend who grew up in Florida helping him with this launch down there.

“There’s just so many restaurants per capita,” he said.

Although he’s been full-time with Chewpons for a little more than two months, he’s excited about the future.

“I got another job offer in late December to start in January and I just made the decision that I’m going to go forth and do this full-time,” he said. “So far, it’s been great.”

Check out the "On the Record with Reisterstown Business" column about daily deal sites .