sunday, the fastest restaurant payment solution co-founded in April 2021 by Atlanta tech leader and e-commerce veteran Christine de Wendel, today announced $100 million in Series A equity financing. sunday’s co-founders include Victor Lugger and Tigrane Seydoux, who imagined and started the critically acclaimed European restaurant group, Big Mamma.
sunday’s new fundraising follows on from the huge traction gained to date and is foresight into future market demand. The way people pay in restaurants is changing for good. The intuition that sunday’s founder had 5 months ago is testament of a global trend supporting restaurant owners, their staff and their clients. After massive success in the first months of development, this new way to pay in restaurants is now expanding to the mass market, from quick-service restaurant to Michelin star. This is why sunday is raising 100M.
This latest Series A financing was led by Coatue, with participation from partners of DST Global, along with several high-profile investors from the restaurant, hospitality and technology industries.
sunday simplifies the payment process for restaurant customers by enabling them to pay the bill in under 10 seconds using QR codes. With sunday, restaurants are able to turn the tedious ~15 minutes it takes to pay at a restaurant into a quick, simple experience that is complete in less than 10 seconds. Diners scan a QR code, split the bill, leave a tip, pay, and walk away: it’s as simple as that. sunday benefits all: the restaurant owner, its staff, and most importantly, its customers.
Since its launch, sunday has received overwhelmingly positive endorsements from consumers and restaurant owners alike, resulting in more than 1 million users and more than 1,500 restaurants signed globally. Moreover, the company has hired 170 employees across five countries (US, UK, Spain, France and Canada) in just five months. Today’s Series A announcement is the company’s second round of financing since its launch; the capital will be used to accelerate the growth and expansion of sunday in a highly-promising, $7.5 trillion addressable market.
“Digital payment solutions are enhancing the customer experience across the board,” said Philippe Laffont, Founder of Coatue. “We believe that sunday is well positioned to drive this change in the large hospitality sector as evidenced by its strong global growth in just the first five months since going to market. We look forward to supporting the team to help further accelerate their expansion.”
The introduction of sunday to restaurants around the globe has been extremely well received by both consumers and restaurateurs:
- More than 1,500 restaurants signed which represent an annual transaction volume of $1.59 billion
- Over 1,100,000 end users have paid with sunday
- More than 2,000 servers have received payments via sunday
- Over $1 million in tips have been given with sunday (40% higher than without the app)
- 12% higher basket spend per table
- 10% faster table turnover
With this new funding round, sunday will invest to achieve the following:
- Expand geographic presence and recruitment in North America
- Expand our product offer to ordering, payment and loyalty through internal development and acquisition in Europe & North America
- Get 100 POSes integrated by the end of 2022
- Get 15,000 restaurants signed by the end of 2022
“This new investment round is a remarkable opportunity for sunday to build a powerful tech stack and develop new product features such as ordering & loyalty programs. It also allows us to accelerate in the US market by growing our Sales, Operations and Partnerships teams,” says Christine de Wendel, co-founder and CEO US at sunday. “We are now in a very good position to hire top talent to drive the speed and stellar execution needed to succeed.”
Following sunday’s previous $24 million seed round, sunday experienced impressive success and confirmed the large potential demand for its QR code-based payment solution. Within weeks of the launch, restaurants in the UK, France and Spain countries began rolling out sunday. This success was made possible by partnerships that sunday quickly established with the leading POS (Point of Sale) systems software such as Micros, NCR, Square, Positouch, Brink, Upserve and Lightspeed, and the most popular payment methods including Apple Pay, Google Pay, Amex, Visa & Mastercard.
The 1,500 restaurants globally who have signed with sunday include US based Bastille, Happy Cooking Hospitality (Jolene, Jeffrey’s Grocery, Joseph Leonard, Fairfax), Alice NYC, Calissa, Osteria 57, Sofreh, Earl, Buckhead Life and Red Beard Restaurants.
In order to scale so quickly, sunday built an impressive team in record time. In just five months, 170 professionals were hired across five countries, with the brand opening offices in London, New York, Atlanta, Paris, Madrid & Barcelona.
sunday’s North American team almost tripled in size from July to August of 2021. The American sales teams are managed by Mandy Quinn, formerly of Uber. Maggie Diehl, a four year McKinsey veteran, serves as General Manager for the northeastern US. Jacob Miller, formerly Director of Product at BentoBox, serves as VP of Product. Marc Weider, who served for two decades at Lazard and BNP, is global Chief Financial Officer and will be based in NYC.
With this Series A financing, sunday plans to double its number of team members over the next twelve months.
“We are honored that this funding round is happening so quickly after our seed round, recognizing the value that we provide and that we will create for restaurateurs, their customers and the incredible potential of the addressable market value,” says Victor Lugger, CEO of sunda
