Restaurant Software Startup Snappy Secures $7 Million Series A Round
Toronto-based restaurant management software startup Snappy has raised $7 million CAD in Series A financing as the startup looks to beef up its North American presence.
The all-equity round, which closed in late September, was led by Texas-based Golden Section Ventures with participation from existing investor Celtic House Venture Partners.
Snappy currently operates in eight countries, including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia. A spokesperson for Snappy told BetaKit it already has a presence and employees in major cities across Canada, and plans to use the new funding to strengthen its presence in Ontario, Québec and British Columbia, as well as establish a new regional headquarters in the US.
“We are pleased to partner with Golden Section Ventures to continue the expansion of our business in North America through regional offices in the US and Canada, as we work with restaurateurs to streamline their operations and boost digital presence and customer experience,” Snappy co-founder and CEO Ricky Wang said in a statement.
Founded in 2016, Snappy offers restaurant management technology for customer touchpoints including point-of-sale, online orders, loyalty programs, reservations, waitlists, and custom-branded mobile apps and websites. The startup’s mission is to help automate simple tasks at restaurants, and therefore improve the speed of service and guest experience.
Snappy’s Series A funding round comes less than two years after the startup raised $2 million from Celtic House Venture Partners and Celtic House Asian Partners. Over the last seven years, the startup has worked with a number of Canadian restaurants, including Freshslice Pizza, Chiang Mai Thai Cuisine, and Coco Fresh Tea & Juice, among others.
Restaurant dining has seen a significant rebound since the COVID-19 pandemic. Many of the restaurants that have managed to survive since the pandemic did so by turning to tech solutions to quickly adapt their business models, operations and offerings.
Snappy aims to offer restaurants a comprehensive solution with three primary objectives: boosting sales, reengaging customers, and optimizing operational efficiency. The startup aims to equip restaurants with a holistic perspective of their business, leading to decreased operational expenses and the ability to make informed, data-driven decisions.
Among Snappy’s platform features are a kitchen display system, online ordering capabilities, advanced analytics, loyalty programs, QR-based dine-in menus, as well as reservation and waitlist management tools.
Snappy is far from the only player in the restaurant software space. Notch, which rebranded from ChefHero following a pandemic-fuelled pivot, aims to help both restaurants and wholesale food distributors reduce costs and streamline their operations.
While not solely focused on restaurants, Montréal-based Lightspeed has expanded beyond point-of-sale solutions in recent years to offer various commerce offerings to restaurants, as well as retailers. Tablz, Tab Commerce, Truffle, and Brizo Data are all Canadian startups that offer software solutions aimed to improve the operations of and customer experience for the restaurant industry.
“Even though the restaurant software vertical has some major players, it’s still an incredibly fractured market,” Golden Section executive director Andrew Smith said in a statement. “Snappy’s cloud-based, nimble, modular solution is a flexible option for independent restaurants and large chains alike. We think Snappy will be the market leader in short order.”