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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Instawork

Instawork Raises $60M to Connect Local Businesses with Hourly Workers

Instawork, an online marketplace that connects local businesses across the U.S. with available workers, announced today that it has raised a $60 million Series C round of funding. The round was led by Craft Ventures with participation from Grelock, Corner Ventures, Four River Group, WndrCo and Tilman Fertitta (owner of Landry’s and the Houston Rockets). Existing investors Benchmark, Spark Capital, GV, Burst Capital, and SV Angel also participated. This brings the total amount of funding raised by Instawork to $100 million.

Instawork’s platform supports a number of industries, including food and beverage and hospitality, where qualified workers like servers and chefs can post their services. Instawork checks references and makes sure each worker is indeed qualified, then connects them with open shifts available at different companies such as Marriott, Sodexo, and Sun Basket. After a shift, the worker gets paid within hours of completion and can rate their experience.

In a press release sent to The Spoon, the company said it has grown dramactically over the past 15 months and now has more than 1 million workers across the U.S. on its network. Instawork said the number of available shifts on its platform has grown 8x in less than two years, with professionals finding work in less than 24 hours with shifts paying an average of $18 an hour.

Labor remains a hot button issue in the food a beverage sector. Though restaurants and bars have been fully re-opened as the pandemic recedes, they are having a tough time filling open positions as the industry grapples with issues around worker safety and fair pay. As those issues get resolved, platforms like Instawork, ShiftPixy, Shyft, and Jobletics can help fill in short-term workforce gaps.

Instawork Raises $18M to Connect Hospitality Shifts with Workers

One of the reasons restaurant owners give for moving towards robots is that they have a hard time finding human workers. We’re still a ways off from a full robot restaurant revolution, so in the meantime restaurants, hotels and other hospitality businesses can find qualified workers to pick up shifts through platforms like Instawork, which announced today that it has raised $18 million in new funding.

The round was led by Spark Capital, GV, and Burst Capital, with participation from existing investors Benchmark, Y Combinator, Tuesday Capital, and SV Angel (hat tip to VentureBeat). This brings Instaworks total amount of funding to $28 million.

Through Instawork, qualified workers like servers and chefs can post their services and look for shifts, sometimes at the last minute. Instawork vets all candidates, checking references and ensuring they are qualified to do the work. Companies post shift openings, and after a worker selects and completes a shift, they can be rated, and even requested for future shifts. Instawork charges companies a per-shift booking fee, and takes care of the insurance, billing and payments.

Right now, Instawork is available in the Bay Area, Los Angeles and San Diego. However, as part of the funding announcement today, the company said that it is expanding to Phoenix, Scottsdale and Mesa, Arizona.

If you consider that there are more than a million restaurants and 15.3 million restaurant workers in the U.S., it’s no wonder that there’s a mini-industry sprouting up to connect the two. In addition to Instawork, there are startups like Jobletics, which does much the same thing, and Shyft, which lets employees more easily swap shifts amongst themselves.

Who knows? Maybe services like Instawork and others will work so well restaurants will have an easier time finding workers, though that probably won’t stop the robots.