Top Insights for Independent Retail in 2018
By: Anthony Noto, New York Business Journal
ShopKeep continues its acquisition streak.
The New York City point-of-sale company has acquired software startup ChowBOT in an effort to bolster its online ordering, payment and delivery options.
ChowBOT’s features will provide ShopKeep’s clients — roughly 8,500 restaurants and bars — with the ability to sync their point-of-sale menu to their individual online order site, where customers can make their order selections, complete payment and select a pickup or delivery option.
Deal terms remain undisclosed.
The news comes a little more than a year after retail technology veteran Michael DeSimone shifted from ShopKeep COO to chief executive. DeSimone replaced Norm Merritt, who was with the fast-growing company for two years but stepped down for personal reasons in late 2015.
ShopKeep is no stranger to M&A. The company acquired Buffalo, New York-based mobile app startup Ambur, as well as Walnut Creek, California-based Payment Revolution to add customized payment processing as an option to its merchants.
Observers have speculated that the company is also likely to go public.
When Merritt was at the helm, he downplayed those plans and called ShopKeep the “Anti-Square,” throwing shade at the company Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey cofounded.
DeSimone feels different. He was previously the CEO of Borderfree, a platform that helps U.S. retailers sell overseas. He took that company public before it was sold to Pitney Bowes.
There are no IPO plans yet, DeSimone said in an interview at the company’s Tribeca office last year, but he acknowledged the possibility of that happening at some point.
“When you look at the potential of the business, the market and how big it is, the growth and the opportunity for the type of technology we specialize in, this could be a very good public company,” he told us. “There’s a big difference between that and getting ready to go public.”
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