Popmenu Raises $4.5M Series A Round

Popmenu, a leading provider of guest engagement software for restaurants, announced today that it has raised a $4.5 million Series A to accelerate the development of its SaaS platform to dramatically improve restaurants' ability to attract new guests and keep repeat guests engaged and coming back for more. Base10 Partners' Rexhi Dollaku led the round with participation from Felicis Ventures' Niki Pezeshki. Popmenu, bootstrapped for its first 18 months, has raised $6 million in total capital to date. Dollaku will be joining the company's board.

Popmenu's technology supercharges online restaurant menus, providing a dynamic consumer experience that places photos, reviews, ratings, and social validation directly on the restaurant's website and under their control. Guests and potential guests can interact with and share specific dishes, and become followers of the restaurant to receive personalized offers and recommendations. Restaurants benefit from powerful real-time menu management, automated omnichannel communication tools, and analytic insights that help uncover opportunities to promote and measure performance down to the dish-level that were never before available.

"We strongly believe, and restaurant owner/operators emphatically agree, that third-party platforms have taken too much control over how consumers discover their next favorite restaurant," said Brendan Sweeney, CEO and co-founder of Popmenu. "They've built that dominance by providing the experience people want when making a dining decision, while restaurant websites struggle to even provide an up-to-date text-based PDF menu. I was building restaurant sites as a web developer nearly two decades ago, and it's astonishing how little the average restaurant website experience has changed since then. There is so much opportunity for innovation, and through Popmenu's mission of building a modern experience directly into the restaurant's website and under their control, we're giving them an ability to express their story and present their dishes in a way that's never been possible before."

"We hear from many clients that since launching they have captured more direct reviews via Popmenu than are being added across the major third-party platforms combined," said Tony Roy, President and co-founder of Popmenu. "Restaurateurs are passionate and personally invested in their business, and to be able to help them feel a greater sense of control over their digital presence means everything to us. We are thrilled to already be helping thousands of restaurants build direct, authentic relationships with millions of guests via Popmenu monthly, and are extremely excited to help many more drive new business and connect with loyal customers."

Popmenu co-founders Sweeney, Mike Gullo and Justis Blasco previously played key roles in scaling Commissions Inc- a SaaS provider that similarly helped equalize local real estate teams against third-party platforms such as Zillow- until its successful acquisition by Fidelity National Financial in 2016. "We have been building software to help level the playing field for local businesses against heavyweight third-party technology platforms for years, and we're proud to support restaurants in this fight," said Sweeney.

"Popmenu has made tremendous progress over the last year, and we're excited to support their vision to help restaurants better engage and interact with customers," said Dollaku, Partner at Base10. "Base10 looks to back defining real economy automation businesses, and Popmenu helps restaurants – collectively one of the largest employment industries in the US – be more efficient, automate manual tasks, and ultimately succeed."

"For years, restaurants have been losing their direct relationships with customers due to the rise of third-party platforms such as Yelp, Google, and numerous delivery apps," said Pezeshki, Partner at Felicis Ventures. "Popmenu is giving power back to the restaurants to truly own their narrative and connect with diners in a way that will drive revenue and increase customer retention. We found the product, team, mission and market opportunity to be incredibly compelling and are thrilled to be able to partner in helping them accelerate."

About Popmenu
Based in Atlanta, Georgia, Popmenu helps restaurants take real-time control of their menu and turn it into an essential tool for attracting and engaging guests. Popmenu is helping drive the future of restaurant guest engagement by taking a revolutionary approach with our patent-pending, cloud-based, dynamic, interactive platform. Popmenu powers the consumer experience for thousands of restaurants across the US and beyond. For more information, please visit get.popmenu.com.

About Base10 Partners
Base10 is an early stage venture firm investing in Automation for the Real Economy. Founded by Adeyemi Ajao and TJ Nahigian, the firm focuses on automation impacting many sectors of the Real Economy including transportation, hardware manufacturing, logistics, and construction. Notable portfolio investments include ThePillClub, Shipwell, Reflektive, and Wonolo. Headquared in San Francisco, Base10 currently has $137M in assets under management. Connect via https://base10.vc and @Base10Partners.

About Felicis Ventures
Founded in 2006, Felicis Ventures is a venture capital firm that has backed 27 companies valued at $1B or more. Felicis invests in iconic companies reinventing core markets (Opendoor, Flexport), as well as those creating frontier technologies (Ginkgo Bioworks, Recursion Pharmaceuticals). More than 80 Felicis portfolio companies have been acquired or gone public, including Adyen (IPO), Guardant Health (IPO), Fitbit (IPO), Shopify (IPO), Meraki (acquired by Cisco), Twitch (acquired by Amazon) and Ring (acquired by Amazon). To learn more, please visit www.felicis.com.