After enduring one too many three-hour dinner dates, she devised the idea for It’s Just Lunch, a business that arranges lunch dates set up by professional matchmakers. Andrea McGinty, who never thought she would own a dating service, had difficulty selling the matchmaker idea to banks for financing. After spending a lot of time at the Chicago Public Library, she wrote a business plan for It’s Just Lunch, and in 1991, started the company with one investor, a friend who she bounced the idea off of, and $6,000. After the first year in business, McGinty bought out her friend and business partner. After the second year, realizing most start-ups don’t survive two years, she had four stores – two in Chicago, one in New York, and one in Washington, D.C. When knock-off companies sprouted in Dallas and Southern California, she bought them out. Eventually, the business expanded to more than 100 branches in the U.S. and overseas and had more than 30,000 clients. McGinty sold It’s Just Lunch in 2007.
| Types | Organization, Business |
| Start date | 1991 |