Food delivery giant DoorDash announced today they have entered into an agreement to buy Bbot, a New York-based maker of order and pay software for restaurants. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Bbot, which offers a suite of off-premise and in-venue ordering solutions, is best known for its in-venue QR code offering that allows customers to pull up the menu, order, and pay for items with their phones. The company has seen rapid growth over the past couple of years as restaurants raced to upgrade their digital ordering capabilities and install contactless payment solutions during the pandemic. The company’s fast growth led to not one but two funding rounds in 2021 and was enough to convince Doordash to scoop up the company.
For DoorDash, which launched its restaurant e-commerce platform DoorDash Storefront in 2020, the BBot deal helps expand its digital suite to include payment and in-venue offerings.
“We’re excited to bring our combined suite to an even wider selection of merchants across the hospitality space – including bars, hotels, and ghost kitchens – so these businesses can engage with more customers, increase their quality of service, and grow sales,” said Tom Pickett, DoorDash’s Chief Revenue Officer, in the release.
The Bbot deal is the latest in a string of recent acquisitions for DoorDash. The company moved into Europe with an $8 billion acquisition of Wolt late last year, and before that, acquired robot bowl-food maker Chowbotics.
For Bbot, today’s news marks the culmination of a journey that started with building a robotic beer delivery system on the ceiling of a bar. The company added QR code ordering as almost an afterthought to enable customers to order beer delivered via the conveyor belt.
“After launching in January of 2018, the next place was like ‘I’ll take all of it except the robots,'” said Bbot CEO Steve Simoni in an interview with The Spoon last year. “That was March of 2018. From there, we pivoted fully into that.”
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