Lunchbox, the next-gen online ordering engine for restaurants, today announced its acquisition of Spread, an online marketplace that connects restaurants with diners, offers delivery and take-out services without having to pay exorbitant commissions to third-party apps like GrubHub, and UberEats. This acquisition will ensure that Lunchbox continues to help restaurants build leading-edge digital products to help strengthen the guest-restaurant relationship and bolster their bottom lines with commission-free food ordering and delivery.
As Lunchbox currently serves multi-unit restaurants, the acquisition of Spread allows the company to now service restaurants of all sizes, including treasured single-location and mom-and-pop eateries to break their reliance on third-party delivery platforms where restaurants lose money and access to essential customer data. Now, smaller restaurants can finally have access to critical customer data which can help them drive increased sales. This platform also has multiple applications and can be focused on target neighborhoods or even be used as a city-run marketplace.
“Together with Spread, we’re creating a no-commission marketplace for the restaurant industry which is an absolute game-changer as they can keep profits in-house,” says Nabeel Alamgir, CEO and co-founder of Lunchbox. “Restaurants will no longer have to give up 15-30% of their online order costs in order to compete with other restaurants and keep their doors open. Now they can process orders online completely free, and create more meaningful relationships with customers as they now have access to diner data.”
The Spread marketplace launched in late 2020 in New York City with 1,500+ restaurants on the platform and $3M+ orders. With the new marketplace, single-location and mom-and-pop restaurants will be able to band together and provide a one-of-a-kind platform that allows patrons to make on-demand orders directly from their digital storefront in minutes.
“We created Spread to answer the question: What would it look like if restaurants banded together and built their own marketplace?” says Andy Wang, co-founder and CEO of Spread. “With this acquisition, we’re able to bring our platform to millions of diners who want access to a more ethical delivery platform that helps restaurants stay profitable. I’m thrilled to be joining the Lunchbox team to spearhead this new platform and help restaurants see greater returns.”
This acquisition will push Lunchbox beyond a white-labeled ordering platform to create one of the most unique platforms available in the restaurant industry. It will also allow the company to explore a new business model that complements its current focus area on building next-gen direct ordering while also investing in a sustainable marketplace created by restaurant people for the restaurant industry.
“With Lunchbox’s focus on accumulating varied data points for each customer interaction, we are able to build a customer database for smaller restaurants so they can target repeat patrons,” says Andrew Boryk, Co-founder and Head of Innovation at Lunchbox. “We’re excited to see what the new phase of Spread looks like as we continue to help more restaurants across the industry.”
