Bite Ninja, which allows restaurants to virtually staff drive-thrus and counters, has raised $675,000 in Pre-Seed funding. TechCrunch was first to report the news, writing that the round was led by Y Combinator, AgFunder and Manta Ray.
The basic gist of Bite Ninja is that it allows restaurant workers to take drive-thru and counter orders remotely. Instead of managing staffers, restaurants get access to a pool of gig workers (called “ninjas”) managed and scheduled by Bite Ninja. Since these workers take orders remotely (from their own homes, for example), these workers don’t actually show up to the restaurant for their shift.
From the customer’s perspective, little changes about the order-pay-collect process. Someone placing a drive-thru order interacts with a remote worker whose face appears on a screen in the drive-thru lane. The customer may not even know the worker is offsite. Bite Ninja says this method can actually increase order accuracy and upsell rates for restaurants.
Bite Ninja is coming along at a time when the restaurant industry is in the midst of a labor crunch and struggling to find workers. Bite Ninja’s platform can help alleviate this issue by allowing QSRs to staff up on demand without going through the process of hiring and training a worker. Another benefit in these pandemic times is that by shifting some of the order taking to a virtual staffer, more social distance can be created in the back of house because there is one less person on-site. For workers, Bite Ninja opens up new work opportunities because they can pull shifts in different restaurants and time zones from the comfort of their home.
As the pandemic pushed people out of dining rooms and into off-premises meal formats, restaurants have needed to modernize their drive-thru operations. Bite Ninja is among a number of companies that are looking to make drive-thrus both faster and more accurate. Other startups, such as ConverseNow and Valyant AI are building artificial intelligence agents that can take orders from people using natural language.
Bite Ninja Co-Founder Will Clem will actually be speaking about his business and the future of QSRs at our Restaurant Tech Summit next week. And just like one of his company’s ninjas, you can attend virtually from your couch, so grab your ticket today!
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