As bars and restaurants attempt to rebound from the pandemic, it’s clear that servers and bartenders need all the help they can get.
Restaurants across the country have found it difficult to staff up to pre-pandemic levels, which has left short-staffed restaurants scrambling to respond to pent-up demand for a night on the town.
UNION, a cloud-based point-of-sale software designed by food and beverage professionals, hopes to make life easier for servers and bartenders with a fast, intuitive system that is capable of handling the demands of high-volume bars and restaurants without crashing.
The system also allows servers to keep notes on customers, like their favorite drink or a fun fact that could help a server build a better rapport with the customer on a future visit.
Perhaps most importantly, though, UNION features a customer-facing app that allows them to order and pay from their phone. No longer obligated to take orders at every table, servers are able to triple their work capacity, according to the company.
UNION is about to expand its capacity, as well, with the help of $22 million in Series B funding. The funding round, announced Wednesday, will allow the company to expand from 34 states to all major metro areas in the U.S.
UNION founder and CEO Alex Broeker said in a statement that customers are comfortable ordering food and drinks from their phone, but they do not have the patience to wait to be seated, wait to order or wait for their check.
“UNION allows consumers to control their entire experience from their smartphones, from immediate contactless ordering to paying their bill whenever they are ready to leave,” Broeker said.
According to the company, the software increases revenue by up to 30 percent while reducing customer wait times by up to 80 percent.
The Austin-based startup has 72 employees, 27 of which are in Austin. With the fresh funding, the company plans to hire an additional 50 employees.
The Series B round was led by Clerisy and included participation from new investors Roth Capital and Aquila Capital Partners, as well as previous investors NEA, Wellington, Fiserv and Tony Catalfano, the former CEO of WorldPay.
Lisa Myers, a co-founder and managing partner at Clerisy Capital, said in a statement that the technologies that win over consumers are those that create “frictionless, fast and personalized service.”
“UNION not only marries all of these elements together, but it also solves critical pain points and increases revenues for bar and restaurant owners,” she said.
Colin Bryant, a partner at NEA, said in a statement that UNION is “ building a treasure chest of data that will ultimately rewrite the economics of the entire POS industry by unlocking invaluable insights.”
