Mobile ordering solution Cloosiv has raised $1 million in seed funding from several angel investors, including Y Combinator founder Paul Graham, Earnest’s Louis Beryl, Spool’s Avichal Garg, and others.
The Charlotte-based startup provides an end-to-end platform for independent coffee shops to integrate mobile ordering into operations. Essentially, it helps a beloved neighborhood coffee shop compete with Starbucks’ mobile technology.
“We’re continuing to expand wherever demand exists,” Cloosiv’s CEO Tim Griffin tells Hypepotamus. “We want to bolster product development and coffee shop support. Our goal is to use these funds to grow faster, which means supporting more coffee shops with the best possible product and service.”
Griffin found out that coffee shops have struggled to compete in the mobile ordering space, as they face challenges like keeping up with customers’ arrival times and syncing inventory to meet demand.
The Cloosiv consumer app displays its coffee shop partners in the vicinity on a map. The user can choose their location and order a drink, down to their choice of milk. They can pay, tip, schedule a pick up, and earn rewards all on Cloosiv.
Since Cloosiv is building a network of these independent shops, the rewards earned can be redeemed at any partner store.
On the operations side, the platform provides a back-end solution for the shop to receive orders and display its menu. It operates in parallel with existing POS systems and will soon integrate with Square.
“Our goal is to hone in on becoming a discovery platform for coffee,” Griffin told Hypepotamus last month. “No matter where you are, it’s instinctual that you would look at Cloosiv to find the nearest, best coffee.”
In addition to customer acquisition, Cloosiv will use the funds to grow a customer experience team that will help manage the onboarding experience for coffee shop partners.
“After speaking with our partners, we’ve learned that a single touch point during onboarding can decrease the time it takes for a coffee shop to launch by more than 50 percent,” he says.
Cloosiv is currently available in 37 states and will pass 500 locations on the platform by the end of the year. They plan to remain focused on supporting the independent coffee shop market in the U.S, says Griffin.
