Close Ad

The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Allset

Olo Unveils New Restaurant Tech Features for Curbside, Dining Room

Curbside pickup is here to stay, and so too is the dining room, judging from restaurant tech startup Olo’s latest announcement. The company announced two new features this week aimed at smoother, more efficient service for off-premises orders. The new features include arrival notifications for curbside orders and order-ahead capabilities for dine-in guests, according to a press release sent to The Spoon.

Olo’s main businesses is to make the management of off-premises orders simpler and easier for restaurants. Its software funnels the orders coming from different sales channels (DoorDash versus social media versus an in-house kiosk) into a single ticket stream and directly into a restaurant’s main POS system. That means less juggling of tablets for the staff and a lower risk for mistakes, since humans aren’t manually keying in orders from a delivery service’s tablet to the POS. 

Eight months ago, that kind of streamlined management was a nice-to-have. Thanks to the pandemic, which has shuttered dining rooms across the country and forced the restaurant biz to lean on delivery and takeout, a platform like Olo’s is a must-have. But given the evolving needs of restaurants, no restaurant tech company should rest on its laurels right now. To stay valuable and relevant to restaurants, they too, need to evolve.

Olo appears to be doing just that with its new bundle of features. The need for speed when it comes to curbside pickup is well documented. Olo’s new feature is available as of now for restaurants using the company’s Expo tablet. When a customer arrives and hits an “I’m here” button, the system automatically notifies the restaurant. It’s not as automatic as, say, geofence-enabled curbside pickup, but it saves customers from having to dial an actual phone number and wait for a human to pick up.

The other big feature Olo released this week, it’s Dine-In Support, may get less use in the near term, though it’s a wise long-term strategy. The function allows customers to order and pay for meals they intend to eat in the dining room.

At one point, this particular technology felt superfluous, and at the moment, cities across the U.S. have closed down indoor dining so there isn’t a great need for it. But someday, we’ll be able to eat in an actual restaurant again, and by then, consumer preferences around speed, efficiency, and social distance will have been firmly embedded into their routines, even when it comes to restaurants. While there’s something a little depressing about a restaurant experience based solely on those factors, it’s inescapably the future for many. Seen in that light, Olo is an early mover in what will be a long-term behavior change. (Fellow restaurant tech company Allset is also a known leader in this area.)

The above features are both available right now, at no extra cost to existing Olo customers. 

Allset’s Tech Gives New Meaning to the Concept of Quick Service in the Restaurant

Not so long ago, the idea of ordering your food before you got the restaurant then sitting down in the establishment’s dining room to eat it felt unnecessary. Why go to a restaurant dining room at all if you’re in that big of a hurry? Why not hit the quick-service chain down the road if you’re that badly in need of quick service?

Flash-forward to now, and being able to order ahead is becoming a must-have for restaurants, in or out of the dining room.

This is what Allset, a company based out of San Francisco, wants to address. In addition to currently offering a bundle of contactless features restaurants can use during this current restaurant industry upheaval, the company also allows customers to order food ahead of time for any type order, whether they’re eating in the dining room or taking it to go.

More than ever, restaurants are finding they need to offer high-tech order-ahead features for both in-house and off-premises meals, and that both speed and minimized human-to-human interactions are important parts of that process. Some companies — third-party delivery services and a slew of restaurant-tech products — offer these things for pickup and delivery orders, but they typically come at a high cost and don’t include any solution for the actual dining room.

Allset doesn’t have any significant competitors when it comes to offering a package that addresses every restaurant experience, which is probably a big reason demand for the service is up. Over the phone this week, CEO Stas Matviyenko said the company has been busier than ever as restaurants scramble for solutions to help them navigate the new normal. “[The pandemic has] changed the way people dine, the way people want to dine. The way restaurants have to serve people [has] changed dramatically.”

Allset, which was founded in 2015 by Matviyenko and Anna Polishchuk, started as a service for dine-in restaurant experiences. Users could choose a restaurant via the Allset app, order and pay for their meal ahead of time, and have their meals ready within about five minutes of their being seated at the restaurant. The company added a takeout component to the business in 2019, a fortuitous move considering the entire industry went off-premises a few months ago. 

As Matviyenko explained to me, Allset was actually working with a contactless pickup solution before the pandemic hit. Seeing inefficiencies in the usual pickup order process — flagging a staff person down to notify them of your arrival, waiting around for the order — the company started offering a way for restaurants to streamline that process. The “ideal” experience, he said, would be for a customer to order and pay for their meal, find their food in a designated pickup area, and be able to grab it and go without ever interacting with staff. Allset actually raised $8.25 million to further develop this concept at the end of March, just as dining rooms were shutting down.

But just because the industry is leaning heavily on off-premises nowadays doesn’t mean Allset is forgetting about the dining room. Matviyenko suggests that a technology like theirs is actually more important nowadays. Restaurants — which have always operated off thin margins — now have to contend with lower sales because of reduced capacity requirements in their newly reopened dining rooms. They will want to turn tables faster in order to get more transactions on a day-in, day-out basis, and one way to do that is to cut down the time a customer has to wait between sitting down and actually getting their food. As well, there are people who would just prefer to grab a quick bite for lunch without eating it from a takeout box, and this is an area Allset has always served. 

It doesn’t hurt that the restaurant menu format is also changing, thanks to reopening guidelines that suggest businesses use digital menus. Baking pre-order into that digital format seems just mere steps away, rather than the giant leap it would have been pre-pandemic.

Currently, Allset is waiving all commission fees for restaurants, and the app is free for customers to use. Matviyenko said since the COVID-19 crisis began, they’ve been getting much more interest from restaurants large and small. Moving forward, he says he expects to see the company grow much faster than before.

Allset Raises $8.25M to Improve Pickup Orders

Restaurant tech startup Allset announced today it has has raised an $8.25 million Series B round. The round was led by EBRD with participation from existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, Greycroft, SMRK VC Fund, as well as new investor Inovo Venture Partners. The new round brings the Allset’s total investment to $16.6 million.

Normally, Allset’s tech is meant for the restaurant dining room. Customers use the app to make a reservation and even order and pay ahead for their food, so that it’s ready when they arrive at the restaurant. In 2019, the company added a pickup option for customers, which in hindsight was a wise move, seeing as most restaurants’ dining rooms are currently closed. 

Addressing that fact, Allset recently added a contactless takeout option where customers order and pay online via the Allset app as usual, then retrieve their meals from dedicated pickup shelves in the restaurant. For restaurants who participate in this program, Allset is waiving the normal 12 percent commission fee it normally charges. Customers, meanwhile, get a daily $4 discount for all orders placed via the Allset app. 

Also in the press release, Allset outlined some new features for the app’s redesign, which include personalized recommendations based on a user’s order history, a Healthy Category, which helps users locate healthier eating options nearby, and special deals made in partnership with Allset’s restaurant partners. 

Allset’s ability to quickly pivot from offering efficient dining room experiences to improved takeout orders may be an important differentiator that keeps the company afloat during this unsettling time for the restaurant industry. It’s unclear when dining rooms will re-open or even if people will want to eat in them in the near future. And with the takeout category nowhere near as saturated as delivery, Allset has a good chance of emerging from this time as a leader in terms of go-to solutions restaurants use.

According to the press release, Allset is currently focused on growing in its busiest markets, Los Angeles and New York. The service is also currently available in Austin, The San Francisco Bay Area, Houston, Chicago, Boston, San Jose, Las Vegas, and Miami.  

Here’s a Rundown of Restaurant Tech Deals Available to Struggling Businesses

As more restaurants are forced to pivot to off-premises models in the fight to stay alive, it seems more tech companies are coming to market with hardware and/or software meant to speed up, simplify, automate, and more efficiently manage delivery. And in the spirit of simplifying things, I’ve rounded up a number of those solutions here that address different parts of the off-premises model. 

Just remember: there are tech solutions that solve problems and, as a friend of mine once said, tech solutions in search of problems. Reduced fees or no, not every product or service is going to be useful, and what improves one restaurant’s business could be a total distraction for another.

Order-ahead app Allset has a contactless pickup option at participating restaurants. For all existing restaurant partners that provide the contactless pickup option at their stores, the company is waiving commission fees.

Delivery orchestration platform Bringg launched its BringgNow feature months ahead of schedule. The new feature helps larger chain restaurants, among other businesses, manage delivery orders, track drivers, make last-minute adjustments, and integrate with third-party platforms. BringgNow is free to new users at this time.

Chowly, whose tech helps manage delivery orders, is offering a “no cost” starter package to businesses needing to quickly pivot to delivery models as more cities and states shut down dining rooms.

DailyPay, an app that lets restaurant workers access their earnings immediately, has waived all access fees so that individuals using the service can get their earned income immediately. 

POS and guest management software platform Epicuri is waiving set up fees and offering a 60-day free trial with no commitment for restaurants right now.

Paytronix just launched a new cloud-based solution that lets restaurants add online ordering and delivery to their existing POS systems and, for those who want to conduct delivery in-house, integrate with DoorDash.

Presto is giving away free self-service kiosks that at this point can be used for pickup orders. In an email to The Spoon, the company also said it is also “offering Presto Quick Serve drive-thru kiosks, staff handhelds, and smartwatches completely free.”

Ordermark, a software-hardware platform that streamlines the process of accepting, managing, and fulfilling delivery orders, is waiving all setup fees right now, according to an email sent to The Spoon.

Restaurant order management platform Revention is offering an Online Ordering and Delivery Starter Bundle for a reduced price. It includes a POS terminal, optional DoorDash on-demand delivery service, and remote installation.

Guest management platform Sevenrooms now offers a feature called Direct Delivery that gives restaurants more ownership over their customer data on delivery and takeout orders. For the next 90 days, existing and prospective Sevenrooms customers can add the feature on at no extra cost. 

End-to-end platform Toast has eliminated software fees for restaurant customers for the next month and will provide those customers with free access to its digital ordering, marketing, and gift card programs for three months. 

Operations platform Zenput says it is “offering operators that are new to Zenput – at no charge or obligation through the end of June 2020 – the ability to use our platform to build-out, communicate, and ensure compliance with their COVID-19 processes.”

Online food ordering platform Zuppler is offering free setup and reduced pricing for restaurants and caterers who want to add online or Google ordering to their websites.

Over the coming weeks, we’ll know more about which products and services are most beneficial to restaurants trying to survive the current situation in which the industry finds itself. In the meantime, drop us a line if you know a company or product you think should be on this list.

Snackpass Raises $21M Series A Round for Its Order-Ahead Food App for Students

Order-ahead food app Snackpass has raised $21 million in Series A funding in a round led by Andreessen Horowitz with participation from First Round, General Catalyst, YCombinator and Inspired Capital. The round brings total funding for Snackpass to $23.7 million.

Snackpass was founded in 2017 at Yale University. Though the company has since relocated headquarters to San Francisco, its focus, for now, remains on college campuses. The app is currently available at 11 schools around the U.S., and Snackpass said in a press release it will use the new funding to expand to 100 campuses over the next two years.

With the app, Snackpass users can order and pay for food then pick it up at the restaurant. (There is no delivery functionality at present.) Where the company sets itself somewhat apart from the food app pack is with its social features and loyalty program. Users earn loyalty points that can be redeemed for free food, either for themselves or friends. The latter highlights the social aspect that’s a major centerpiece of Snackpass’s strategy. Built into the app is a Venmo-like feed where each purchase a user makes shows up and where people can communicate with one another, get restaurant recommendations, and send gifts (i.e., free food).  

This emphasis on creating a community within the app is one of the reasons Snackpass has been able to maintain something other food delivery apps struggle with: a loyal user base. Third-party delivery may be on track to have 44 million U.S. users in 2020, but most of those people hop between apps, more interested in finding the best deals on food than claiming allegiance to, say, DoorDash versus Uber Eats. 

A loyalty program, which is different from subscription models many of the big-name food delivery apps offer, is also key to keeping Snackpass users coming back. The company claims a 75 percent penetration rate among students within six months of being on a college campus. The service can also sync with students’ campus meal plans.

Right now, college campuses are fertile grounds for testing new approaches to food delivery. Though unique, Snackpass is hardly the only app out there catering to students. Earlier this year, food delivery app Good Uncle was acquired by Aramark, a longtime food services provider for colleges and universities. In 2018, Grubhub acquired Tapingo, an order-ahead app for college students that’s at 150-plus schools.

Those are only a couple names in the pack. DoorDash, Allset, and others are also making their way to schools in the U.S., and the competition for college students will intensify as we head into 2020. The new funds, as well as having a name like Andreessen Horowitz in their court, will hopefully give Snackpass enough financial and operational muscle to stay in the center of that competition.  

How the Uber Eats ‘Dine-In’ Feature Could Affect Restaurant Operations

Uber Eats now wants to streamline more than just your food delivery order. The company made an addition this week when it announced it will also speed up your experience when you eat in the actual restaurant, too.

A tipster dropped a line to TechCrunch detailing the new Uber Eats Dine-In feature, which lets customers order their food ahead, so there’s very little wait from the time a person enters the restaurant to when they get their meal.

To use the feature, customers log into the Uber Eats app and choose the “dine-in” option. The app shows how long the food will take to prepare and notifies you when it’s nearly ready, which is your cue to head over to the restaurant and take a seat. Users can leave a tip for the server in the app. For this feature, Uber Eats also waives the usual delivery and service fees.

Image: Jenn Marston/The Spoon

The whole process is very much like Allset, a competitor that also offers a streamlined process for dining in-house.

Beyond how Uber Eats’ entrance into this area might affect Allset’s business, the move also raises questions about how an uptick in these sorts of apps could affect restaurant operations. Within Uber Eats’ Dine-In option, users are shown how long the food will take to prepare (see screenshots above). It’s unclear if that time calculation factors in how busy the kitchen is at the moment or, for that matter, if the restaurant has the seating to accommodate the order. The app seems like an ideal way for a person to speed up a lunch in the middle of the workday or a pre-movie dinner. But those are both times restaurants tend to get heavy traffic anyway, so it remains to be seen if adding another sales channel to the mix will make restaurants’ lives easier or more hectic.

One area Uber Dine-In could provide a boost is for off-peak times. As TC pointed out, restaurants could use the Dine-In feature to attract more customers during less busy times by running promotions through the app itself or by subsidizing an Uber ride to the restaurant. In theory, at least, these kinds of promotions could provide a small revenue boost for a restaurant.

Restaurant operations aside, apps like Dine-In and Allset do raise the question of why you would go out to eat in the first place if you don’t have the time or patience to wait 11 minutes for your food to arrive after ordering. There does seem to be something about these features that would make, say, a pre-movie meal feel more like just-another-transaction rather than an evening out with friends or family. That’s in the eye of the beholder, of course, and as we see more apps like these coming to market, we’ll hear plenty more pros and cons from both side of that argument.

ItsaCheckmate and Allset Team Up to Streamline Pickup Orders for Restaurants

With digital restaurant orders set to triple by 2020, it’s becoming more crucial than ever for restaurants to find ways to manage the flow of different sales channels, from third-party sources to in-house mobile apps. And it’s not just delivery. Takeout also accounts for part of the digital orders placed by 60 percent of consumers each week in the U.S. Even in-house diners can now order via an app rather than a server.

ItsaCheckmate, whose software platform streamlines the task of juggling all these orders, has teamed up with Allset to address the latter two of those sales channels: takeout items and in-house meals ordered ahead of time. The partnership, announced today, is aimed at helping restaurants transition to digital ordering, even if they don’t yet offer straight delivery.

ItsaCheckmate’s technology integrates all incoming orders from third parties into the restaurant’s main POS system. Right now, the system connects major POS vendors like Toast and Clover with outside services like Uber Eats, DoorDash, and Postmates. Other third-party partners include the likes of Bite Squad, Texas ToGo, delivery.com, and ChowNow among them.

The whole point of integrating third-party order services with restaurant POS systems is to make the day-to-day workflow easier for restaurant owners and staff, who would otherwise have to manually input all the orders coming from disparate sources — a process that’s fraught with confusion and very prone to human error.

The Allset app, meanwhile, currently serves a few different channels: you can reserve a table, order food, and pay for it before you ever set foot in the restaurant. More recently, the company started offering customers the ability to order and pay for pickup items, too.

Integrating the app with ItsaCheckmate will allow restaurants wanting to include the Allset app among their sales channels to do so without creating more confusion.

ItsaCheckmate counts Dig Inn, Five Guys, Momofuku’s Milk Bar, and Bareburger among its customers. To date, the company has raised $3 million. Allset has raised a total of $8.4 million and currently serves restaurants in NYC, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, and Houston, TX.

Square Gobbles up Zesty to Bolster Corporate Catering

Square, the merchant services company, announced today that it has acquired “certain assets” of the corporate catering startup, Zesty. This addition will help Square expand its food ordering service, Caviar. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Zesty is only available in the Bay Area, where it works with 150 restaurants to delivery corporate meals. The company had raised $20.7 million since launching in 2013, $17 million of that was in a Series A raised in 2015. Zesty will become part of the Caviar for Teams unit, which launched in 2016. The Zesty team will bring with it “full-fledged, white-glove corporate catering, allowing us to serve companies of all sizes,” Square said in a press announcement.

The acquisition comes at a time when the concept of corporate catering is going through its own evolution. It’s no longer just dumping food in a main room at 11:00 and having people scrum to get it while it’s still hot (and having the worst bits sit uneaten). New types of competitors are springing up with new approaches to feeding hungry employees.

Forkable uses smart recommendations to let employees order individual lunches rather than partake in large buffets. Allset flips the script entirely and makes it easier for employees to get out of the office and pre-order and pre-pay for meals at nearby restaurants. And Byte Foods sets up fridges with healthy snacks and food right inside the office.

But until those become more mainstream, Zesty will keep bringing in chafing dishes and, in the short term, continue operate independently.

Allset raises $5M to take waiting off the menu

You would be forgiven for rolling your eyes when you first hear of Allset. The reservations app, which today announced it had raised $5M in Series A funding (hat tip: TechCrunch), wants to make the dining experience more “efficient” by letting you reserve a table, order and pay all before you even take your seat.

At first, this seems like yet another case of Silicon Valley trying to disrupt something that was actually just fine, thank you very much. After all, a restaurant is more than just food. It’s the ambiance, the slowing down for a minute to enjoy a meal.

But that’s not always the case, especially when you are busy and need to maximize your lunch hour. Being seated and served in rapid, automatic succession is actually a great time saver. Or if you are having a lunch meeting, the ability to pre-order and pre-pay makes can take some of the social awkwardness out of the process and allow you to be more productive.

And Allset believes it isn’t just good for diners, the company says it can be a boon to restaurants, helping them become more efficient and deliver a VIP experience. In this regard the startup is just one of a slew of services looking to optimize restaurant processes and the business of eating out.

Speaking of business, Allset also provides a service that allows companies to offer faster restaurant lunch experiences for employees. Having worked a startup that had catered lunches every day, the ability to actually leave the office in a timely manner (and experience actual sunlight) would have been a great perk.

And just as Facebook has expanded its foray into food delivery, and AirBnB lets guests book reservations via Resy, perhaps it’s not that much of a stretch to imagine a more business-focused social platform such as Linkedin expanding into the business of business lunches through some kind of partnership with Allset.

Allset is available in San Francisco and the Bay Area, New York City, Chicago, Boston, Austin, Seattle, Los Angeles, and San Jose. Greycroft led the funding round announced today. Founded in 2015, Allset has raised more than $8.35 million in total funding so far.