Small coffee shops that relied on foot traffic were affected when the global pandemic kept people in their homes. That’s when many cafe owners turned to technology to help them make online orders and payments.
Startups were also eager to help these companies stay safely in business, and venture capital followed. For example, Joe Coffee raised some funds to help coffee shops accept mobile orders and Odeko and Cloosiv merged to combine your inventory and mobile ordering applications. As a combined entity, Odeko subsequently raised tens of millions of dollars in venture-backed financing.
When Jack Pawlik and Avery Durrant founded a New York-based coffee shop software company drips In 2019, they didn’t know that they would soon join this group. The couple’s initial idea was to help local coffee shops create mobile ordering apps, similar to those offered by Starbucks.
“The more we interacted with store operators and owners, the more we realized there was a much bigger problem,” Pawlik exclusively told TechCrunch. “We were almost contributing to that problem by being that kind of platform.”
Dripos co-founders and co-CEOs Avery Durrant and Jack Pawlik. Image credits: drips
Through conversations with store owners, Pawlik and Durrant learned that many were using a simple point-of-sale system, like Square. It wasn’t necessarily bad, but it wasn’t “exactly intended for their workflow,” Pawlik said. Many stores then used five to ten more software programs to fill the gaps.
Pawlik and Durrant decided to pivot and create a tool that would replace Square, Toast, and those other eight pieces of software with one comprehensive tool.
Dripos brings together point of sale; mobile payments; employee and payroll management; loyalty and marketing automation; and administrative functions such as accounting and banking.
Manny Caral, owner and operator of Revolución Coffee + Juice with five locations in Texas, recently switched locations to Dripos and said in a statement that Revolución was one of those companies that used five different things, including Toast and Square.
“We can achieve this and much more through Dripos,” Caral said. “The product has allowed us to streamline our daily operations and give us time to focus more on our customers’ experience.”
Dripos’ approach has also resonated with other clients. Last year was the company’s first full year with the new tool; It now has a presence in coffee shops in 46 states. The number of locations relying on Dripos has increased by 400% and the company processes hundreds of millions in annual payments.
Now the company wants to invest in areas like technology development and marketing, so Pawlik and Durrant secured $11 million in Series A funding. Early-stage venture capital firm Base10 Partners, known for its investments in Plaid, Instacart and Figma led the round and was joined by a group of angel investors, including Y Combinator managing partner Michael Siebel, Punchh founder Shyam Rao, and Bench founder Ian Crosby. In total, the company has raised $17.3 million.
As part of the investment, Base10 director Caroline Broder, who led the Series A, joins the Dripos board of directors.
“We have full conviction in this business model,” Broder told TechCrunch. “Early on in our relationship, it was very clear that Jack and Avery had a vision of building an entire suite. They built a lot of products so they could come in and replace things like software early in the company’s lifecycle. They understand what these business owners want and need and what they don’t get. Then they built something very specifically made for them. That empathy with the client is a rare quality.”
