Less than two years ago, business administration alumnus Brett Foreman founded the app Kick-it Points which focuses on connecting Cal Poly students to the San Luis Obispo community.
Kick-it Points is an app that creates a digital storefront for physical stores by attaching deals to specific locations and activities around the Central Coast. When people go to those locations, Foreman said, they can claim the deals and redeem them in-store.
Deals range from free coffee from Avila Market and discounted massages at Avila Bay Club to half-off any lunch special at The Rib Line BBQ and Grill.
Foreman said he came up with the idea during his time at Cal Poly as a student athlete, where he spent a lot of time with his soccer team both on and off the field. In creating the app he said he sought to combine social activity with saving money, while also making people “real-world social.”
“We want to have a three-step approach of discovering things to do that are paired with deals, then claiming those deals and then redeeming those deals,” Foreman said. “Within those three steps you’re hopefully either by yourself meeting people, by yourself enjoying your time or with others rallying together like I was a lot of the times with my soccer buddies.”
Since the creation of the app, it has grown immensely in both the number of companies featured as well as the number of users. At the time of its relative conception in November 2017, it had featured 11 companies and had attracted 400 users. Two years later the app is used by about 20 percent of the San Luis Obispo population and features over 100 businesses.
This percentage embodies more than just college students. Foreman said he initially noticed patterns in college students that gave him the idea for Kick-it Points, but as the app grew in popularity he began seeing it used more and more by families with children.
Kick-it Points has also adapted to include more markets rather than just deals for food and drink, which Foreman said was the primary incentive for users of the app in its early stages. Now, the app features transportation, service and outdoor activity businesses, as well as wellness industries.
Architecture sophomore Ameya Dalal said the app helped him discover places and activities he would not otherwise have known about.
“It’s not just restaurants and places where we can get drinks – it’s a lot more dynamic in that there are a range of experiences that we can get benefits from,” Dalal said. “For instance, Kick-it Points connects me to health and fitness institutions in [San Luis Obispo] that I never had access to, like the Athlon Fitness and Performance or the SLO Yoga Center.”
Foreman said he hopes to grow Kick-it Points along the Central Coast in the future. He hopes also to one day create a reality television show called Hustler House TV, giving behind-the-scenes access to his app as well as some of the ventures of his friends.
“That’s just another net where people get to recognize the brand [as] more than just the brand,” Foreman said. “They recognize the people behind it.”
Despite the growth in popularity and expansion of the app, Foreman said the goal of the app — to engage people with their community — remains intact.
“Everything we do, by manufacturing the caption or whatever we are doing, is to say something about engaging with people in the real world, whether they’re a business owner or a user,” Foreman said. “At the end of the day we are a business, and we need to drive traffic to these other merchants in town, and we need to make the users happy.”