The restaurant industry is scrambling to find ways to encourage diners to return amid the pandemic. Bbot is a contactless restaurant ordering and payments platform that enables restaurants to allow their diners to use their own smartphones to select the items they would like, place the order, and pay all through their smartphone, without ever having to download or sign up for an app. The company is experiencing a wave of adoption with both delivery and in-person dining over the last several months. CEO and Cofounder Steven Simoni shares some more insight into how the company pivoted from a restaurant robot idea to its current offering, how the pandemic has amplified the need for the solution, and the company’s seed funding round from investors that include Craft Ventures and Acceleprise.
Hospitality
Butler Hospitality Raises $15M to Bring Cloud Kitchens to Hotels to Elevate In-House Dining
Rooms service, even at the finest of hotels, can be hit or miss. Usually expensive, untimely, and a hodgepodge of items, in-house hotel dining is often best avoided. Butler Hospitality addresses this through its cloud kitchen for hotels, where the company takes over hotel kitchens and provides turn-key food and beverage services that make room service profitable again. Founder and industry veteran Tim Gjonbalic shares more about how Butler elevates the in-house dining experience at hotels, how the company weathered the downturn in the hospitality industry due to COVID-19, and the company’s $15M Series A round from investors that include &vest, Scopus Ventures, Mousse Partners, Kraft Group, and Loeb.nyc.
SevenRooms Raises Another $50M for its Hospitality Management Platform
Two Credit Suisse bankers came together in 2011 and noticed they were having a difficult time securing, flexible reservations at top NYC restaurants with their hectic schedules. This led them to look further into the restaurant industry’s guest experience operations at a holistic level. Today, SevenRooms is a complete guest experience management platform that’s built and designed from the ground up for the hospitality industry. CEO and Cofounder Joel Montaniel shares some insight on the state of the hospitality industry during COVID-19, how technology is lightening the blow, and the company’s $50M Series B round led by Providence Strategic Growth.
Tattle is the Platform to Empower Chain Restaurants to Boost Customer Experience
Chain restaurants are not particularly known for having outstanding customer service and Tattle wants to fix this through its omnichannel guest feedback solution that’s easily installed across transaction channels such as kiosks, WiFi, websites, etc., through an API. Tattle’s solution identifies opportunities for improvement and allows individual locations to set metrics to maximize revenue performance. […]
Blueground Pulls in Another $50M for Your Next Furnished Apartment
Technology is fundamentally changing the concepts of work, play, and live. When it comes to living, as work becomes more connected, more and more people find themselves traveling for extended periods of time and do not want to deal with an impersonal hotel or traditional corporate housing situation. Enter Blueground – the startup founded in […]
Good Uncle Gobbled Up by Aramark
Good Uncle, the on-demand food delivery service serving college campuses, has been acquired by food service titan Aramark. The terms of the transaction were not disclosed. “Good Uncle strengthens our ability to offer quality and convenience through services that allow our college consumers to order restaurant-quality food and have it delivered when and where they […]
Mercato Raises Another $4M to Level the Playing Field for Independent Grocers
Independent grocery stores are facing challenges due to the rise of online grocery platforms, national grocery chains, and apps like Instacart. Mercato empowers independent grocery stores by leveraging technology into their operations to provide capabilities similar to the chains. Specifically designed to meet the needs of independent grocery stores and specialty food retailers, the platform serves […]
American Express is Acquiring Restaurant Reservation Platform Resy
Restaurant reservation and management platform Resy, which calls itself the largest private reservation service in the US, is being acquired by American Express. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. “American Express is a brand that we have admired and sought to partner with from our inception. There are myriad points of synergy between Resy […]
Satisfi Labs Raises an Additional $4.6M to Bring Conversational Chatbots into a New Age
Whenever you walk through the doors at the Barclays Center or Citi Field, there is a knowledge management platform hard at work behind the scenes. Satisfi Labs is the AI-powered knowledge management platform that ensures that visitors have the best experience, managing everything from concession and lounge traffic to the VIP season ticket holder experience. […]
Thirstie Raises Another $7M to Bring Alcohol Online
While 50% of alcohol consumption is done at home in the US, less than one percent of alcohol purchases happen online for home delivery. Recognizing this significant gap in the market (a $100B+ industry in the US alone annually) is NYC startup Thirstie. Thirstie has built the industry’s most sophisticated all-in-one turnkey white-label e-commerce platform […]
This NYC Startup Ensures That Women Never Have to Waste Time Thinking About Their Next Blowout
Every woman has experienced the dread of wasted hours from wanting to look nice after a workout. That’s why Glam+Go is offering efficient, high-quality hair services that are co-located within hospitality properties and fitness centers. This revolutionary service is helping women save tons of time by letting them get their hair blown out wherever they […]