Signaling tough times ahead, ChowNow lays off employees – Nob6

ChowNow, a startup that builds branded on-line ordering methods for eating places, in the present day introduced layoffs internally, Nob6 has realized. In response to a number of sources who spoke to this reporter on the situation of anonymity, round 100 individuals have been affected throughout groups together with onboarding, operations, and gross sales.

ChowNow didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.

ChowNow launched in 2010 as a method for founder and CEO Chris Webb and his associates to simply order supply and pickup from smaller eating places with out a web based presence. The corporate powers branded web sites, apps, and social media accounts for eating places in addition to its personal cellular and net ordering portals.

ChowNow takes care of funds and supply by means of agreements with firms like DoorDash and native supply startups like Jolt Supply in Los Angeles. It additionally offers discoverability and advertising and marketing providers, for instance partnering with Instagram to make photos and tales from eating places shoppable by including “order meals” buttons and stickers to the eating places’ photographs and movies.

The Playa Vista-based firm positions itself as a friendlier different to incumbents like GrubHub and UberEats, charging a month-to-month charge as an alternative of the per-order commissions typical of meals supply companies. ChowNow additionally guarantees that eating places on its platform retain their very own buyer information for advertising and marketing and insights.

As of 2019, ChowNow claimed that it had over 11,000 restaurant prospects throughout North America that have been producing $1 billion price of income mixed by means of its platform. ChowNow has raised $64 million in enterprise capital so far, most just lately a $21 million Sequence C spherical in 2019 led by 3L Capital and Catalyst Buyers.

Financial headwinds have hit the net meals ordering house arduous as traders pull again from what they understand as capital-intensive bets. DoorDash just lately shut down Chowbotics, a salad robotic startup, only a yr after it acquired the corporate for an undisclosed sum. Elsewhere, “on the spot” supply firm Gopuff introduced this week that it might lower 10% of its world workforce — about 1,500 staff — and shut 76 of its U.S. warehouses.