Restaurant tech platforms HotSchedules and Fourth announced today they have merged business operations to create an end-to-end restaurant management SaaS solution. According to a press release sent via email, the deal was backed by Marlin Equity Partners and Insight Partners.
Fourth has long offered a software package for restaurants that collects and analyzes various pieces of data both in and out of the kitchen to help restaurants better manage the back of house, from how much inventory to buy and staffers to keep on the floor to payroll details and invoice processing. All this is done through a web-based dashboard. Talking to The Spoon this past March, Simon Bocca, COO of Fourth, highlighted the importance of data in today’s restaurant: ““That’s where we see ourselves as being most valuable for restaurants. We bring in all the data: transaction, productivity, and put that into a really helpful package so that leadership can understand what’s happening.”
HotSchedules, meanwhile, also offers a centralized web interface that uses data to help restaurants make better decisions around workforce management — that is, training and scheduling employees, keeping in line with compliance rules around labor, and forecasting sales and labor costs.
The new combined offering merges both these companies’ strengths into a single cloud-based solution that works across devices. According to the press release, it will also integrate with most major POS systems, along with third-party apps, and accounting platforms.
As restaurants large and small continue the trek to digitization, and as data becomes a more important aspect of doing business, we’ll see more and more software offerings that aim to simplify the process of collecting, analyzing, and acting on data. Long-established players like Toast and Upserve already own large portions of the U.S. market for this kind of restaurant tech. And newer companies are getting attention, too, like LimeTray, an Indian company who just started operations in the U.S.
The newly combined Fourth-HotSchedules business will be headquartered in Austin, TX and London, UK, with Fourth’s CEO, Ben Hood, as CEO over the new combined entity. The press release also notes that an executive team will be made up of members from both Fourth and HotSchedules. Both companies will continue operations around their own respective platforms.
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