There’s a unique kind of satisfaction one feels when a long-awaited food delivery finally arrives at your doorstep. After scrolling through pages of online menus and deciding exactly which dishes look the most appetizing, those pictures come to life in a disposable container chock-full of your favorite flavors. With a tip to the delivery driver, it’s finally time to dig in.
Online ordering and delivery options were integral to helping restaurants stay afloat during the pandemic when dining out was canceled and not everyone took to cooking at home. Plenty of eateries had to adopt new technology to accommodate takeout orders while also finding ways to keep customers engaged and coming back for more. One of the companies doing just that is Atlanta-based Popmenu, a digital marketing platform that’s expanding its tech with its latest acquisition.
Nowadays, about 42 percent of people in the U.S. order takeout three or more days a week, according to Popmenu. For all these frequent visits, Popmenu provides restaurants with a SaaS solution to make their websites more immersive. What started out as a way to convert text-heavy PDFs into interactive and attractive online menus has grown into an all-in-one platform to drive customer engagement. Popmenu offers solutions for online ordering and waitlisting, as well as AI-enabled marketing tools that automate outreach across social media, advertisements, SMS and more. It’s growing its capabilities even more with the addition of Atlanta startup OrderNerd.
Helping restaurants keep their third-party online ordering platforms in one place, OrderNerd includes tools for front of the house, kitchen and back office operations on a centralized platform. Its software allows restaurant staff to manage every order from one device and send those orders to a single printer. In the same breath, it also consolidates the sales reporting for the back office.
“Over the years, restaurants have had to cobble together multiple tools to attract, engage and transact with their customers – making the whole process complex, costly and not nearly as effective as it could be,” Brendan Sweeney, CEO and co-founder of Popmenu, told Built In over email. “We want to give them a holistic solution with useful, usable tech that will make their lives easier while helping them to grow their customer base and sales. We knew right away that OrderNerd was going to be a great fit for our team. We share a strong empathy for restaurants and are committed to transforming the tech experience for the industry to produce better outcomes.”
The acquisition was announced on Monday and follows Popmenu’s $65 million Series C round back in July. With the help of OrderNerd’s tech, Popmenu will be able to simplify and expedite online ordering and delivery for businesses. It will also offer OrderNerd as a standalone solution to its clients, allowing them to capture additional guest data from third-party orders. The financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
As Popmenu continues to grow, the company is hiring across various departments. It currently lists more than a dozen roles based out of its Atlanta office spanning engineering, product, sales, marketing and more.
