Restaurant tech provider PAR Technology Corporation announced today it has acquired guest engagement platform Punchh for $500 million in cash and shares. The deal adds loyalty and guest engagement software to PAR’s existing arsenal of restaurant tech tools, which currently includes a wide range of hardware and software products for restaurants.
Punchh has for a long time promised to “take the guesswork out of marketing” for restaurants by helping them align their sales channels and marketing campaigns with what their customers actually want. It does this by collecting data on customers and using it to dictate the types of campaigns and promotions sent out. A high-level example of this would be sending deals on plant-based meals to vegans and never sending that group offers for burgers. Punchh, however, can get considerably more granular than this.
To date, the company has raised $68.1 million. Its platform serves over 200 brands, including Pizza Hut, Denny’s, and El Pollo Loco.
PAR’s CEO and President Savneet Singh noted in today’s press release that integrating the Punchh platform into PAR’s existing offerings will allow restaurants to access more technology via a single system, rather than “juggling disjointed vendors,” as is fairly common nowadays.
However, this idea of gluing together siloed technologies to run a restaurant will get increasingly harder as digital orders increase and customers demand more personalization. It follows, then, that we’ll see more deals like the PAR-Punchh one in the future as companies attempt to turn themselves into “one-stop-shop” systems for the restaurant industry. Other companies, including Square and Toast, are also building out unified restaurant management systems that are made up of hardware and software controlled from one centralized point.
