Covid-19 lockdowns hurt the hospitality industry: 13,000 Canadian food service businesses permanently closed their doors during pandemic restrictions.
This dramatic unfolding of events spurred a tech-driven change within the food service sector.
“It hasn’t been easy for restaurant operators to maintain success,” Mo Chaar of Givex wrote for Fintech.ca last year, “but there is one consistent factor present among those who have powered through—technology.
Fintech providers, Chaar observed, “are proving their worth by helping restaurants bounce back, and in some cases, even prosper and see unparalleled growth.”
Let’s highlight some of the firms working toward this pursuit in Canada.
Toronto’s Tab
Toronto-based startup Tab Commerce, which helps restaurants manage expenses, this year raised US$1 million in seed funding in a round led by venture capital firm Matchstick Ventures.
Tab was founded in 2021 by Ty Wilson (CEO) and Sam Unterman (CTO). Wilson grew up in the restaurant industry as his family owns and operates several pubs.
He and Unterman both spent several years working in restaurant kitchens and operations where they saw firsthand just how labour-intensive and disorganized the restaurant back office is.
And because of this, restaurants had little visibility and control of their expenses, and zero visibility into the opaque and fragmented world of restaurant wholesale purchasing.
Tab’s platform streamlines the invoicing process, making it easier for restaurants to track their expenses and reconcile payments.
The startup also offers a virtual credit card to help businesses manage spending more effectively.
Neo and Tim’s
Neo Financial this year joined forces with the iconic coffee chain Tim Hortons.
The collaboration introduces Tims Financial, including the Tims Mastercard Credit Card, powered by Neo Financial through the Tims mobile app.
“With almost five million Canadians actively using our Tim Hortons app every month, it became obvious that we could offer our most loyal guests a way to earn Tims Rewards Points even faster with everyday spending and higher points on most gas, grocery and transit purchases,” said Markus Sturm, Senior Vice President of Digital, Loyalty and Consumer Goods at Tim Hortons.
This is one of Canada’s largest Banking-as-a-Service partnerships, leveraging the Tims app’s user base of five million monthly active users.
With Neo’s turnkey technology platform, brands like Tim Hortons can unlock new revenue streams, boost customer engagement, and gain valuable customer insights.
The Tims Credit Card has no annual fee and earns Tims Rewards Points.
OpenTable and Square
Tech giant Square this year expanded its integration with online restaurant-reservation service OpenTable into Canada.
The first Table Management integration is designed to help businesses in the food and beverage industry better accommodate walk-ins, speed up operations, keep track of revenue, improve turn-times and seat more guests—all while providing greater visibility to diner and reservation insights.
Square’s Future of Commerce report revealed that 39 per cent of restaurant owners and managers in Canada said automation could help fill critical gaps for booking reservations, when businesses were not fully staffed.
The POS integration is one of many ways Canadian restaurants are adopting technology to better manage operations.
“Square is committed to helping our sellers succeed, and one way we can do that is by continuing to grow our ecosystem of dedicated products and services for restaurants of all types and sizes,” stated Lisa Fong, Head of Product, Restaurants at Square, in April.
“We know from listening to our Canadian sellers that integrating reservation platforms with their Square tools was a top request and we’re delivering on this feature to help restaurants thrive in 2023,” she added.
Edmonton’s Truffle
Third-party delivery services like Uber Eats, SkipTheDishes, and DoorDash are popular services but increasing fees have become less appealing to diners and restaurant owners alike.
Edmonton-based Truffle offers a digital restaurant platform that equips food providers to affordably add delivery and pick-up services without adding staff.
And they raised a $2.3 million seed round led by Accelerate Fund III in July to power this vision.
Truffle’s subscription-based cloud software enables restaurant operators and owners to offer online ordering or delivery management without changing their existing point of sale system or losing a cut of revenue to third-party delivery services.
Founded by Omer Choudhary, Truffle is using the funding to hire key positions and expand sales and marketing across Canada.
Toast Pops North
The publicly-traded Toast, a digital platform built for restaurants headquarter in Boston, this year announced a new phase of growth in Canada.
Canadian restaurants now benefit from Toast’s platform, which connects a restaurant’s entire operations from front of house to back of house, from payments to partner integrations.
80,000 restaurant locations use the Toast platform in the US.
“Technology has proliferated in Canada’s restaurant industry,” stated Jen DiRico, who serves as Senior Vice President and General Manager of Toast International.
Toast is positioned to take on established homegrown restaurant management tech providers, such as Montréal-based Lightspeed and Toronto’s Touchbistro.
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