Launched in 2018, Phood was a payments app that let students use dining dollars to order food from third-party apps and merchants anywhere in the world. It built the first campus-integrated debit card and worked with colleges across the nation, such as UT-Austin.
Parmley discovered firsthand the long and boring process of moving money as a business owner. He recalled it could take 15 to 30 days for vendors to receive the actual dining dollars from the universities after students ordered. This meant the company had to raise millions in a debt facility to pay those vendors while waiting for payment from the universities to process. As inflation rates rose and debt borrowing became expensive, this made running Phood expensive.