Canter’s Deli is a storied eating institution in Los Angeles, serving up delicious food since 1931. Alex Canter, the deli’s fourth-generation owner and operator, wanted to embrace the new customers restaurant delivery services like GrubHub and DoorDash could bring. But there was a problem.
Though he successfully set up 14 different online ordering platforms at Canters, each service had its own technology and procedures for handling orders, and none of those services talked to each other. “Each system requires its own hardware to manage it,” Canter told me by phone, “They pretend like nothing else is out there.” Despite added revenue, all these added delivery services were causing confusion with the wait and kitchen staff.
To solve this problem, Canter co-founded and is the CEO of Ordermark, which funnels orders from disparate online ordering services into a unified system to simplify order fulfillment. Ordermark announced today that it has raised a $3.1 million seed round led by TenOneTen Ventures, with participation from Act One Ventures, Mucker Capital and others.
Ordermark works with restaurants to identify delivery services available in their geographic area. The company then onboards these platforms and integrates them into an Ordermark dashboard, which standardizes all incoming orders and funnels them through a single printer. For this, Ordermark charges a “small subscription” fee per month.
So instead of having to build its own ordering app and force customers to download it, a restaurant can use Ordermark to connect the business with apps and services customers already use.
Ordermark also works in reverse, as a single point of communication back out to customers. If a menu item runs out or the restaurant is shutting down early, the business can enter that information into the Ordermark dashboard and it gets communicated out to all partner-delivery services.
Based in Santa Monica, California, Ordermark has 30 employees and just celebrated its one-year anniversary. Canter said his company is already working with 150 restaurant brands including burger chain Sonic. It will use the new money to accelerate growth and expand to more markets and integrate with more delivery services.
With big players like UberEats and Amazon, and startups like DoorDash getting $535 million in funding, there is gold in them thar restaurant delivery hills. And just like the pick axe salesmen who made the real money in the original gold rush, Ordermark is setting itself up nicely by providing the tools restaurants need to boost their own revenue.
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