Juice in the City lands $6M for mom deals

The "GroupMom" daily deal company uses a voluntary sales force to locate the best deals

Everyone knows that the nation’s real spending power doesn’t lie with investors or law-makers: it lies with moms. Moms need to buy stuff! Lots of stuff! All the time! So it makes sense that a new daily deal site has cropped up to provide mom-specific deals harvested from its local mom sales force. Juice in the City, a company that calls itself GroupMom, has raised $6 million in a round of funding led by Tandem Entrepreneurs and HU Investments.

Launched in May 2010, the San Mateo-based company works by matching moms with local businesses that meet their needs. The question, or course, is how does Juice in the City know which businesses will really appeal to moms? Answer: the same way most moms find good deals and awesome products: by talking to other moms.

Juice in the City uses a “mom sales force” to recommend their favorite businesses and vendors. But unlike other daily deal sites, which also use on-the-ground sales forces to locate good products, Juice in the City’s mom sales force isn’t a team of full-time employees who are trudging out every Monday morning and scouting around for businesses they might be able to talk into giving customers a group deal. Juice’s sales force is entirely voluntary—it’s made up of moms who simply want to share their awesome purchases with other moms, and by so doing, get a percentage of the deal’s revenue.

And it looks like moms are lining up to share their finds. The company is taking off in California, expanding to Sacramento, Stockton, and Modesto in the near future. Juice in the City also says that businesses are happy as well, with a full 80% saying they’d work with Juice in the City again.

“As early investors, Tandem has been in the fortunate position to track Juice in the City’s talented team and incredible growth,” said Doug Renert, co-founding partner of Tandem Entrepreneurs, in a statement. “We believe Juice has the right recipe for local commerce and holds a unique advantage with an already entrenched network of moms across the country.”

Juice in the City isn’t the first company to get into the mom-focused deal space. It’s jumping into the ring with a noisy host of other coupon and deal sites just for moms, but Juice in the City could be the first to not only offer daily deals, but do it by utilizing a voluntary community of moms.

The company plans to use the new funds to push its market leadership position.