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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Tock

Squarespace Acquires Hospitality Management Platform Tock for $400M

E-commerce platform Squarespace announced today it has acquired Tock, an online platform for managing reservations, tables, takeout, and more, for $400 million. The deal is a mix of cash and stock, according to a press release from Squarespace.

Chicago, Illinois-based Tock’s extensive feature list includes reservation, waitlist, and table management, event management, and, more recently, pickup and delivery order management and contactless ordering and payments features. Tock’s sell to restaurants and other foodservice businesses is that establishments can view and manage all these moving parts from a single dashboard. The system integrates with third-party POS platforms, not to mention a boat-load of other technologies, from social media platforms to third-party delivery services.

That Squarespace would want to acquire the company is not that surprising. Squarespace, which privately filed to go public in January of this year, has built a business on providing DIY(ish) website and e-commerce building tools for businesses. Right now, thanks to the pandemic, there are a lot of restaurants in need of digital properties (websites, apps, etc.) that can accommodate the industry-wide shift towards to go orders and more digital forms of ordering and payments. These are all features Tock has in its arsenal, and which Squarespace will now be able to offer to potential customers in the hospitality business. 

In a statement today, Squarespace CEO Anthony Casalena called e-commerce “a large and growing market opportunity” in the restaurant business. “We believe that together we will continue building on their success, bringing Tock’s capabilities to our all-in-one product suite in service of our customers in the hospitality industry and beyond,” he said.

To date, Tock has raised $27.5 million in funding.

Tock Raises $9.5M to Scale out its Reservations Platform

Reservation and table management platform, Tock, today announced that it has raised $9.5 million, led by Valor Equity Partners and Origin Ventures. This is the third round of funding for Tock and brings the total amount raised by the company to $19 million.

Tock is a cloud-based reservations software system and, according to the company, it’s the only platform that allows restaurants to set up three types of reservations: free, deposit and fully pre-paid. The Tock system also integrates with a restaurant’s POS software to gather and surface relevant guest data, so a restaurant can learn how often someone dines there, when their birthdays are, food preferences, etc.

Tock is currently used by more than 1,000 restaurants across 23 countries. I spoke with Tock CEO Nick Kokonas, who said that the company is growing 15 percent month-over-month, and that the money will be used to scale up marketing, sales and support.

“We started with the high-end,” Kokonas said of his clientele and go-to market strategy, “and are working toward the middle.”

Given the boom in restaurant delivery, I asked Kokonas if Tock will broaden its scope to incorporate off-premise business. “We are not looking to get into delivery,” he said.

Which is probably a good idea since there is plenty of competition in the reservation space alone, and there has already been some consolidation. Kokonas was actually in the news earlier this month when he tipped off Eater about rival reservation platform Resy acquiring competitor Reserve. The New York Times later confirmed the acquisition and noted that Resy serves 10,000 restaurants worldwide. OpenTable, which was bought by Priceline in 2016, operates in more than 50,000 restaurants.

For its part, Kokonas said that Tock is adding 4 – 5 new restaurants a day and that the company is prepping a new feature that allows smaller restaurants and pop-up events to self-onboard onto the Tock platform.

Food Tech Roundup: CBD, Butterballs and Resy!

With Halloween in the rearview mirror and eggnog now on store shelves, we have officially entered the holiday season.

Dunh-dunh-DUNH!

Fear not, for we at The Spoon are here to help you with your connected cooking this season, whether that’s through cooking tips or… some supplemental help. Speaking of which…

The 411 (420?) on CBD
Derived from cannabis, CBD is all the rage and is being infused into everything from chocolates to beer to water and potentially even Coca-Cola products. Supposedly the wonder substance CBD can supposedly reduce inflammation and help with anxiety.

But does it, though? I mean, really? Or is it just another example of snake oil in a new package?

Vox has put together a pretty great primer on the state of CBD that you should read. Here’s a tasty nugg from that story to pique your interest “CBD is about as poorly regulated and understood as a product this popular can possibly be. It’s not accurate to say that CBD, as a whole, is bullshit. From a medical perspective, it’s promising; recreationally, it’s interesting. But that doesn’t mean the stuff you’re buying works.”

Alexa Adds Butterball Skill
Whether it’s your first or fiftieth time cooking turkey — there’s no shame in getting a little help when you need it. In a move fit for our digital age, in addition to its famous hotline, Butterball now has an Alexa skill to give you guidance with your bird.

As The Takeout writes, using Alexa connects you with an automated assistant to answer basic cooking questions by using just your voice. So your hands can be otherwise elbow-deep in a turkey, or filled with giblets and you can still get the answers you need.

RUMOR: Resy to Aquire Reserve
Eater reports that online reservation platform Resy is set to acquire rival table booker, Reserve for an undisclosed sum of money. The source of the rumor is Chicago restauranteur, Nick Kokonas (owner of Alinea) who also just happens to have his own reservation system called Tock. Kokonas also claims to have looked at a Reserve acquisition earlier this year, but passed on it. Both Resy and Reserve declined to comment.

UPDATE: The New York Times reports that Resy did indeed acquire Reserve. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.