The company ChowNow was founded in 2011 by Christopher Webb, a former employee of RBC Bank and Lehman Brothers; and Eric Jaffe, a former commercial real estate investor.

[1][2] The same year, ChowNow, initially part of the incubator Launchpad LA, closed a seed round of $1 million from GRP Partners, James Bailey and angel investors.

[6][7][8] In August of the same year, ChowNow introduced a feature that allows potential diners to place orders directly from Google search results, including thousands of restaurants across U.S. and Canada.

Upon receiving confirmation of a diner's order through the integrated Apple Pay, Yelp or Google Wallet,[18][19] the system forwards it to the selected restaurant.

As it receives the order on its Facebook page website, or Instagram, this restaurant processes it and communicates back to the diner for delivery.