If you’re not familiar, Grubwithus is Los Angeles-based startup that specializes in organizing group meals for people with similar interests. Users sign up for a Grubwithus account, and then start signing up for dinners, organized weeks in advance around themes such as the love of sushi or a fascination with Ron Paul. Grubwithus pre-arranges set meals with partner restaurants, and diners prepay their bills before attending. Once there everyone only needs to cover their drink tabs.

GrubTonight works in a similar way, though much accelerated. The iPhone-only app — Grubwithus probably isn’t hosting any Android-lover meals just yet — alerts members to dinners being held that night along with their menus and locations. Unlike the regular Grubwithus dinners, there’s no theme, just social interaction. Diners again prepay and they receive a confirmation an hour before the meal is held. At launch, GrubTonight is only offering up meals in the LA area, but the company said it would expand to more cities in the coming months.

Grubwithus said that the app is focused on immediacy, making it ideal for business travelers, tourists looking to meet each other or the locals or as a means for the newly relocated to meet the community. If a group of diners hit it off they can meet for future meals using the social tools in the larger Grubwithus network.

Grubwithus is one of many startups exploring the idea of a “real-life” social network built around the communal table, but it’s developed more momentum than most. A Y Combinator alum, Grubwithus raised $1.6 million in seed funding from Ashton Kutcher, Andreessen Horowitz, First Round Capital, Aviv Nevo, and other angel investors.

Last year, it announced a $5 million Series A round led by LA VC GRP Partners. In February it used some of those funds to buy up Canadian “supper club” startup The Social Feed, allowing it to expand internationally. In addition to LA, Grubwithus is now organizing meals in Chicago, New York, San Francisco and San Jose, Toronto and Washington, D.C.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock user corepics

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Grubwithus didn’t reveal the financial details of the deal, though the $5 million it just picked up from Los Angeles VC firm GRP Partners and Lebanese entrepreneur Michel Daher had to help. Grubwithus has officially launched in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago – though it does let members organize meals in other cities – but with the integration of The Social Feed it’s now open for business in Toronto and Vancouver as well. As part of the acquisition, Grubwithus not only gets Social Feed’s membership roster, but also the restaurant agreements it has negotiated.

The Social Feed launched in Vancouver January of 2011, just six months after Grubwithus went live in LA. The two companies have (or had) a different approach to social dining, though. As this profile by Toronto’s The Grid alludes to, The Social Feed seems more organized around the “supper club” concept – getting a large group of people of varied interests and backgrounds together at a communal table to sample a specific restaurant’s fare. The company’s co-founders organize the meals themselves.

Grubwithus has created more of a social network around the premise of small-scale dining. Members sign up for specific groups based on interest — whether its travel, technology or love of raw fish. From there, members organize their own dinner parties, while Grubwithus handles the logistics: selecting the restaurants, working out the details of the menu and handling the credit card transactions.

Hopefully Grubwithus will combine both concepts. While I like the idea of building a meal around a common interest like travel, I would suspect the common trait most Grubwithus users share is their love of good food. Tailoring or selecting your communal meal based on a specific restaurant or menu seems just as important as the choosing a discussion topic.

Grubwithus director of communications Amy Partridge said the company definitely plans to keep the supper club format going in Canada while also phasing in its topic-based format. So far, she said, there are plan no plans to introduce the supper club concept to its U.S. markets. But here’s hoping.

The Social Feed’s co-founders Alexander Close, Reggie Milligan, and Michael Brown will stay on as Grubwithus’s Canadian advisors.

Photo of recent Social Feed meal courtesy of Grubwithus

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Imagine Meetup cross-pollinated with Groupon and Open Table and you get the idea. Grubwithus forms local social networks – right now focused on New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and San Francisco – allowing people to gravitate to groups with similar interests, whether it’s architecture, travel or the love of raw fish. Rather than keep those social interactions digital, though, Grubwithus provides the tools to book group meals at local restaurants.

Grubwithus negotiates deals with each restaurant for prix fixe menus, determines tips, handles booking and even divvies up the bill through its online payment system. All you have to do is show up and, well, be social, which in this case also includes paying your own drink tab. For restaurants it’s a means of generating guaranteed business and marketing themselves without resorting to steep the steep discounting of Groupon and other social couponing services (though Grubwithus does seem to negotiate some pretty impressive deals).

So far, the service seems more focused on the social aspect rather than tailoring the specific dining experience. For instance, when setting up a meal, Grubwithus selects the restaurant based on your price, dietary and location preferences, though you are allowed to make requests. If the idea is to build your social dining experience around a specific restaurant or menu, you may be out of luck. But that also appears to be why Grubwithus needs the funding. It plans to use the money to expand its restaurant portfolio as well as boost its marketing efforts and launch in more cities, both in the U.S. and internationally.

Grubwithus is one of the many “in real life” companies that are popping up in the food and dining space. Targeting diners makes perfect sense. What more perfect way to make the awkward transition from the digital ether to the real world than over a meal and drinks?

The business, however, hasn’t been kind to all who have tried it though. Startups like Spoondate and Housefed have shut down their services, but that hasn’t stopped other companies from taking a crack at other social dining models. Danielle Gould at Food+Tech Connect has written up interviews with two of the more fascinating startups connecting people online to the meals they want to eat: Zokos, a digital party planner and event manager, and Gusta, which targets the trendy “supper club” space. Gould also interviewed Grubwithus founders Eddy Lu and Daishin Sugano last year when the company was just getting off the ground – definitely worth checking out.

Grubwithus started in 2010 in Venice, Ca., and raised a $1.6 million seed round through Y Combinator and a group of venture capital firms and angel investors including Ashton Kutcher, Andreessen Horowitz, First Round Capital, Aviv Nevo, and others. The $5 million Series A round was led by Los Angeles VC firm GRP partners with participation from Lebanese entrepreneur, Michel Daher.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock user corepics

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