TORONTO, ON, October 12, 2021-- ResQ, the all-in-one technology platform helping restaurants streamline repair and maintenance operations, announced it has raised $39MM USD in Series A funding. This raise is co-led by Tiger Global and Canvas Ventures. Mike Ghaffary from Canvas Ventures and former CEO of Yelp-Eat24, and Nilam Ganenthiran, former President of Instacart will be joining ResQ's Board of Directors.
ResQ enables restaurants to submit, manage, and pay for repairs and maintenance on a single platform while ensuring high quality and cost-effective work through a curated marketplace of service providers. Amid the restaurant industry’s hiring crisis and increased operating costs, ResQ alleviates much of the pressures of labor shortage and cost inflation by reducing time spent on managing repairs and maintenance by 70 percent and driving down repair and maintenance costs. This gives restaurant operators time and resources back so they can focus on building great teams, creating new culinary experiences, and serving guests.
“On average, restaurants spend five to seven percent of annual sales on repairs and maintenance -- that’s $50B a year in North America. This number is much higher when you factor in the opportunity cost of managing repairs, including lost sales and inventory, and time spent on each repair. With ResQ, restaurant operators save 20 percent in annual maintenance costs and reduce equipment downtime, helping them retain an additional $9B of sales revenue.” said Kuljeev Singh, CEO and Founder of ResQ.
“ResQ is building the first high-growth technology platform to fully serve the operations side of a restaurant. Innovation in restaurant tech has historically been at the front of house, and ResQ turns that on its head by providing technology and a marketplace to help the back of house. As soon as I met Kuljeev Singh and the ResQ team, I knew they had a high-impact company that could help restaurants retain revenue while creating reliable jobs for service providers across the industry,” shared Mike Ghaffary, General Partner, Canvas Ventures.
“The pace of change has never been faster in the restaurant industry. ResQ’s maintenance platform and vetted vendor marketplace bring transparency and competitive pricing to restaurant operations. And not just for traditional restaurants – we expect the coming wave of delivery-focused kitchens will also benefit enormously from working with ResQ.” shared Griffin Schroeder, Partner, Tiger Global Management.
The company has raised a total of $48MM USD to date and is the fastest growing restaurant repair and maintenance platform. Since its seed round announcement made in June 2021, ResQ’s customer base grew from seven states to 36 in the US. With the new capital, ResQ plans to grow its team by 400% to double down on its mission to empower restaurants and service providers to streamline repair and maintenance operations.
“Managing and operating restaurants in multiple brands and geographies requires reliable data and insights about our maintenance costs to identify operational priorities and cost-saving opportunities. ResQ allows our teams to optimize our back-of-house operations and reduce the time spent on repairs and maintenance as well as down time due to equipment or facilities issues. This gives us more time to focus on our teams, growing our businesses, and delivering an excellent customer experience,” said Michael Mulcahy, Partner, MBN Brands, a customer of ResQ that also invested in the Series A raise after validating the product and team.
“Operating restaurants has always been a game of margins. To sustainably grow those margins, you need sound data to help identify areas of opportunity. Repair and maintenance used to be something that happened reactively, but ResQ streamlined our R&M operations and added a layer of insights we didn’t have before. ResQ has helped speed communication between management and vendors so that issues get resolved quickly. At the corporate level, we can identify where we’re overspending and make the informed decision on replacing a piece of equipment rather than repair it.” said Nick Sorise, Partner and Director of Growth and Development at Parker Hospitality.
The round also saw participation from existing investors, as well as leading entrepreneurs and innovators across the culinary, restaurant technology, e-commerce and marketplace spaces. Other investors include Homebrew Ventures, Inovia Capital, Golden Ventures, Jeff Jordan (Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, previously President & CEO of Opentable), Tony Xu and Stanley Tang (Founders of DoorDash), Bastian Lehmann (Founder of Postmates), Gokul Rajaram (DoorDash), Harley Finkelstein (President of Shopify), celebrity chefs Michael Mina, and Tom Collichio, A* (the team behind being former CFO of Uber, CFO-COO of Opendoor, founder of Eventbrite), Geoff Donaker's Burst Capital (former COO and Board Member of Yelp), Matt Higgins’ RSE Ventures (Vice Chairman of Miami Dolphins, guest Shark on Shark Tank), Maple VC, Matthew Tucker (President of Olo), Lenny Rachitsky, Max Mullen (Founder of Instacart), Michael Katchen (Founder of Wealthsimple), Brian Pokorny (SV Angels), LVL1, Polar Ventures, Union, 9Yards Capital, and many existing customers of ResQ also participated.
“This announcement isn’t about us, it’s about our entire industry, our customers and service partners — this is about the restaurant operators and managers that fought hard with resilience through the pandemic to keep their lights on and keep their staff employed. Our vision is to create economic empowerment in the service industry and we’ve just started.”
— Kuljeev Singh, CEO and Founder of ResQ
About ResQ
ResQ is the end-to-end repair and maintenance platform for restaurants. We empower restaurants with easy-to-use software to request, manage and pay for repair and maintenance services all in one place while providing data and insights to empower better decision making.
ResQ is trusted by over 4,000 leading restaurant groups including KFC, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, Wendy's, A&W, Burger King, Tim Hortons, The Keg, Fogo de Chão, Marugame Udon, Parker Hospitality, Cactus Club Cafe, and Paramount.
Media contact for further information:
media@getresq.com
