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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

tablet hell

Third-Party Delivery Integrator Deliverect Raises €16.25M

Deliverect, which makes software that integrates orders from multiple third-party delivery services into a restaurant’s POS system, announced today that it has raised a €16.25 million (~$17.63 million USD) Series B round of funding. EU-Startups was first to report the news, writing that the round was led by OMERS Ventures, with participation from Newion, Smartfin and the company’s founders. This brings the total amount raised by Deliverect to €19.9 million (~$21.58M USD).

Based in Belgium, Deliverect‘s software alleviates the so-called “tablet hell” situation many restaurants face when partnering with third-party delivery services. Typically, each different delivery service provides the restaurant with its own tablet to process incoming orders. Those orders then have to be manually inputed into the restaurant’s main POS system. The more delivery services a restaurant adds (Uber Eats, DoorDash, Deliveroo, GrubHub, etc.), the more confusing this proposition becomes.

Deliverect’s software acts as a middleman in this scenario. It’s software ingests the third-party delivery orders and unifies them into a single stream that automatically goes into the restaurant’s POS system. The result is that restaurant staff don’t need to monitor multiple platform for incoming orders.

Deliverect uses a SaaS model and as EU-Startups writes:

So far the startup has processed more than 3.5 million orders, supporting UK brands like Absurd Bird, You Me Sushi, Taqueria, and Crêpeaffaire. In addition, the company works with Unilever, which through Deliverect is able to integrate with Deliveroo and Uber Eats and deliver Ben & Jerry’s and Magnum ice creams directly to customers.   

Deliverect says it will use its fresh funding for product R&D, to strengthen its position in Europe and expand internationally. The company will face tough competition here in the U.S., where a number of entrenched players offer the same third-party integration services. Ordermark, Chowly and Olo are just a few of the startups promising to douse the flames of tablet hell (almost all of which are running pricing specials now to entice new, cash-strapped customers).

But there is a bigger, more existential question that dominates any talk of restaurant tech these days, and that’s the very future of restaurants themselves. Here in the U.S., at least 3 percent of restaurants have permanently closed. Even delivery services haven’t been spared as Deliveroo just laid off 350 people (15 percent of its staff). And while delivery and takeout have been a lifeline for some restaurants, this pandemic has restaurants re-evaluating their entire tech stack to see exactly what they actually need.

Deliverect’s ability to raise this much money right now speaks to at least some optimism in the world, which, is a delivery we can all welcome.

Cuboh Raises $1.6M CAD for Third-Party Restaurant Delivery Integration

Cuboh, which helps restaurants integrate and streamline orders from third-party delivery services, announced this week that it has raised $1.6 million CAD (~$1.2M USD) in seed funding.

The Victoria, Canada-based Cuboh offers a hardware/software combination meant to replace the tablets supplied by third-party delivery services. It also integrates directly with a restaurant’s POS software, eliminating the need for an employee to manually input the order into the restaurant’s main system. When a delivery order comes in from external third-party delivery service like Door Dash or Uber Eats, Cuboh’s software intercepts the order, processes it and relays straight to the kitchen.

The result is supposed to save restaurants from the so-called “tablet hell,” which happens when restaurants have to juggle multiple tablets as a result of partnering with more than one delivery service. (Though, you can use Cuboh’s tablet to run the service.)

“We’re really focused on the aggregation,” Juan Orrego, Cuboh’s Co-Founder and CEO told me by phone this week. “We have taken the order management process. We can promise restaurant that they don’t need any other tablets.”

Cuboh runs a straight up SaaS business model, $80 a month for restaurants doing less than $20,000 in delivery per month, $140 a month for those doing between $20,000 and $30,000, and $200 a month for those doing more than $30,000.

The company was part of the Y Combinator program last year and already has more than 1,000 customers around the world in countries like the U.S., Canada, Australia and Hong Kong.

As my colleague, Jenn Marston has noted, tablet hell is something that a number of startups are looking to solve. Ordermark, Chowly and Olo are all taking different approaches to integrating and streamlining third-party delivery orders for restaurants.

But third-party delivery is itself going through a bit of an existential crisis. Whether it’s shady business practices, or gouging restaurants with high fees, restaurants are taking a hard look at exactly how much benefit they are getting from third-party delivery and whether those operations should be taken in-house.

That’s a much bigger question for the industry however. In the meantime, perhaps Cuboh will help keep third-party delivery services in restaurants good grace by taming that tablet hell.