Popmenu, an Atlanta-based startup that provides guest engagement software for restaurants, has raised a $4.5 million Series A funding round. Rexhi Dollaku of Base10 Partners led the round, with participation from Felicis Ventures’ Niki Pezeshki.
“We plan to scale our sales force, accelerate product development, beef up our client experience team and, for the first time, spend on marketing,” CEO and co-founder Brendan Sweeney tells Hypepotamus. “We’re excited to share with a broader audience the value we’re bringing to thousands of independent, full-service restaurants all around the country.”
The company plans to use the funds to accelerate the development of its SaaS platform, develop its workforce, and invest in marketing for the first time.
Popmenu’s technology transforms online restaurant menus by providing a dynamic consumer experience that places photos, reviews, ratings, and social media likes directly on a restaurant’s website and under their control.
Guests can interact directly with menus on restaurant websites by sharing favorite dishes and following the restaurant on social media for personalized offers and recommendations.
“We have really deep empathy for restaurant owners,” Sweeney says. “The tools and services available to them for easily sharing their story in the digital world have been lacking for decades.”
“The vast majority of the time, the menu — which we believe is the most critical and underutilized asset restaurants can use to promote their business — is in a text or PDF form.”
Restaurants working with Popmenu benefit from real-time menu management, automated omni-channel communication tools, and analytics that help uncover opportunities to promote and measure performance on all levels. Better yet, show off menu items.
“Most owners we meet are spending an insane amount of money for very basic sites and digital marketing services. Even delivering an experience that would have been just OK 10 years ago is difficult for them,” Sweeney adds.
Popmenu is now in the process of finalizing several mobile apps over the next two quarters to enhance both the restaurant and guest experience.
This recent funding round caps off a banner year for Popmenu. The company has grown fivefold in revenue over the past year. Popmenu is now garnering about 5 million menu views per month, which Sweeney takes as an encouraging sign.
“That means we have a tremendous opportunity to impact the consumer journey in favor of our clients, and that number is growing exponentially,” says Sweeney.
“Base10 looks to back defining real economy automation businesses, and Popmenu helps restaurants — collectively one of the largest employment industries in the U.S. — be more efficient, automate manual tasks, and ultimately succeed,” Dollaku said in statement
Popmenu has now raised $6 million in total capital to date.
