It’s never been easier to get your taco fix, thanks to the gluttony of third-party food delivery apps available.
That’s great for consumers craving al pastor tacos, but for restaurants, it can be a major headache.
Alex Canter experienced this firsthand while working at Canter’s Deli, his family’s restaurant in Los Angeles. To keep up with the online ordering revolution, they joined every food delivery app they could find. And to keep up with the orders on each of those independent apps, they bought nine tablets, two laptops and a fax machine.
We give them a single dashboard to command their online ordering business.”
While the payoff was great, accounting for 30 percent of their revenue, the process was unsustainable.
“The staff hated it because it was so complicated to manage, and we were messing up orders left and right,” Canter told Built In. “I figured there had to be a better way, but I reached out to other restaurants and nobody had an answer.”
So, he partnered with three other people in the restaurant industry to cook up a platform that would consolidate all of those orders into one place. That platform became Ordermark.
Today, Ordermark, which is based in Los Angeles and has an office in Denver, works with more than 3,000 restaurants across the country and integrates with more than 80 food delivery apps. And on Monday, the company announced that it has raised $18 million in a Series B round to reach even more restaurants and invest in its technology.
“For us this round is to just continue scaling and adding fuel on the fire,” Canter said. “We’re already working with restaurants across the country and doubling down to integrate with more existing restaurant applications.”
Ordermark launched in 2017, and started with providing restaurants with a single dashboard and a printer from which they can manage their online ordering. As online ordering has surged in popularity, the company has added additional integration features to its dashboard to help restaurants capitalize, including kitchen management and point of sale software.
“We give them a single dashboard to command their online ordering business,” Canter said. “It allows restaurants to have a flexible realistic business designed from their perspective.”
Eventually, Canter believes there will be two types of restaurants: those who cater to online ordering and those who provide an experience. Already, more and more ghost restaurants, or those without seating or a storefront, are starting to pop up.
This funding round will help Ordermark scale and support restaurants through that transformation period. Canter said the company also plans to move into a new office in Playa Vista to accommodate its growing team of 100.
Foundry Group led the round, along with participation from existing investors TenOneTen Ventures, Vertical Venture Partners, Mucker Capital and more.
