Over $532,000 in Government Grants Secured for Calgary-based Software Company Top Dish

My name is Elias and I'm the CEO of Top Dish. We service about 100 restaurants within the city with passes. So we run Calgary's coffee pass for the whole city. We also were the official partner for the hot chocolate pass, and we have quite a few more passes coming up to help serve restaurant owners.

On grant experience before Impact Applications: not a whole lot, to be honest. In terms of grant applications and all that, we found that it was very difficult for a small team to manage all the requirements and the processes and the follow-ups. Especially when we really want to focus on what we want to do and serve restaurant owners with a small team, that's just very hard to do while also maintaining the processes and the requirements for grants. So it was very helpful to get a team to handle all that in a very professional way.

We met through our lawyer, funny enough. Our lawyer said, "Hey, you need to meet with this guy, Chase." And I'm like, "Okay, sounds good." So I met up with Chase, seemed like a solid guy. I was just like, "Okay, whatever, I'll meet up with him, see what he wants," and see some options and stuff. But no, it turned out to be a really great win-win situation for both of us.

I value the automation side of things, and I can let Impact Applications handle a lot of the leg work that's involved with managing all the requirements and the requests that come in from government employees. And so that's what's really great. You guys can take care of it, and we're able to handle things on our side and focus on what we do best.

There is some time required, a bit of checking, but a lot of the leg work is done for us, which is great. Often Impact Applications would send me requests to approve things, look at the goals and the very specific details of the project and what we're looking at accomplishing with that, and to ensure that we're on the same page with things. At the beginning it takes a bit of work to ensure that we're thorough, that we're on the same page with what's required of the project and when we submit it and move it forward. So sometimes that takes a bit of time to get up and running, but once that's validated, then we're good to go.

Working with your team has been excellent, because I'm very much like, "Okay, give me the checklist, give me exactly what I need to do." And so I can focus on the things that I need to do and you can do the stuff that you're best at. That's the great side of things: for the most part we've gotten to know each other, developed a working relationship, and have that fine-tuned with both our teams, which has been awesome.

It's been great. The process of working with Impact has been amazing. Very professional and on point with things. If there are certain things that come up, or I have a little bit of feedback with some things, then it gets handled right away, which is fantastic. And that's what we want as a team. We just want to be able to focus on our company and have a team focus on the rest of the things with respect to acquiring funding.

So in less than two years we've been approved for $478,000, which has been fantastic. Just shy of half a million dollars, which is amazing. It's really allowed us to actually pay some top-tier developers in our company and get them onboarded with us, and they've been incredible to work with. And that's, as a startup, that's huge, because you want the A-team. You absolutely want the A-team, and sometimes it's hard to get the funding in order to pay the six figures. But with this, it's allowed us to do that and develop an excellent product for Calgary restaurant owners across the city.

100%, I'd refer Impact Applications to other businesses. Been great to work with.