NEW YORK – Bbot, a hospitality tech startup dedicated to simplifying and improving the ordering and payments process for restaurants, announced $15 million in Series A funding led by CRV. To date, Bbot has raised a total of $22.3 million. The investment allows Bbot to continue building its e-commerce platform and meet the rapidly growing demand from developers looking to code their own extensions and applications.
Bbot was founded in 2017 to help restaurants, bars and other customers in the hospitality industry simplify their operations with in-venue and online ordering. Bbot’s innovative platform has allowed restaurants and similar small and independent hospitality businesses to remain resilient and adapt to sudden changes accelerated by the pandemic such as the shift to contactless ordering and payments. As the industry navigates worker shortages, the platform also has the ability to help operators retain and attract employees thanks to its intuitive interface that makes dining experiences more convenient and efficient.
“Restaurateurs are always looking for new ways to provide excellent hospitality experiences,” said Steve Simoni, CEO and co-founder of Bbot.“The way guests want to order and pay has changed forever, and the need for innovative technology that can help business owners compete in today’s digital world affordably and easily is crucial. With this funding, we will continue to invest in creating the most advanced technology platform so our customers can focus on providing high-quality hospitality experiences, instead of worrying about the tools and integrations.”
In the last year, the company added over 700 customers and reached 85 employees across 14 states, seeing 700% year-over-year growth. This funding will help grow Bbot’s platform based on the requests and needs of current customers, including new point of sale and loyalty integrations. The company will also focus on features for food halls and virtual brands, further establishing Bbot as the platform of choice for these operators. In addition, the investment will help Bbot finalize and ultimately launch a self-service Bbot app store, which will allow developers to immediately get started using Bbot’s existing platform to code their own extensions and apps.
“We’ve spent the last four years creating a solid base for our technology that we can build upon,” said Simoni. “We are now focused on expanding our platform so developers can integrate the technology for their restaurant clients and create custom offerings.”
Because technology preferences may differ depending on the setting, the platform will cater to a range of casual dining experiences across the hospitality sector, from bars and breweries to food halls and hotels. In some settings, this might mean sitting with your friends while ordering from your smartphone without ever having to walk up to the counter – in others, ordering room service from your smartphone rather than the television or waiting to be redirected by the front desk. This feature placed Bbot at number one overall on Hotel Tech Report’s Global Best Mobile Ordering & Room Service Software list in the 2021 HotelTechAwards.
“Bbot has unique insight into the rapidly changing hospitality industry,” said Reid Christian, General Partner at CRV. “Their vision expands beyond the traditional POS industry, into a fully integrated software and payments platform enabling order and pay for the first time. This functionality enables hospitality operators and software developers to easily introduce features that are being demanded by their patrons and customers. With this latest round, Bbot will deepen its talented bench with key hires and provide additional product enhancements to support the rapidly growing customer base.”
About Bbot
Founded in 2017 by three naval engineers who wanted to shake up the industry, Bbot has been one of the fastest growing order, pay, and delivery solutions in the country. With their award-winning no-app platform, Bbot helps thousands of hotels, bars, breweries, restaurants, food halls, ghost kitchens, bowling alleys, and more to empower guests to live in the moment. Their open-API, collaborative Tab Sync, and other tech advancements bring entrepreneurs the tools they need to support guests, servers, and management alike. Bbot has been the leader in order and pay solutions and continues to use technology to improve the guest experience.
About CRV
CRV is a venture capital firm that invests in early-stage enterprise, consumer and biotech startups. Since 1970, the firm has invested in more than 400 startups at their most crucial stages, including DoorDash, Airtable, Patreon, Drift and Iterable. Founders need more than capital to build a great company. It takes a partner who understands the entrepreneurial journey and knows what it takes to win. From founding to IPO and beyond, CRV is there every step of the way. Founders rely on CRV to be trusted, long-term, committed partners, which has helped make CRV into one of the longest-running venture capital firms in the world.
For More Information: