Chowly makes first acquisition with Koala buy

Dive Brief:

Chowly, a point-of-sales integration/delivery integration company, has acquired Koala, a digital ordering platform that works across websites, apps and kiosks, the company wrote in an email to Restaurant Dive. The terms and price of the transaction were not disclosed.
Koala’s CEO Nat Trienens will remain with the company temporarily to assist with the combination of the two businesses, and Koala executives Walter Beller-Morales, Melanie Norton and Brett Spiegel will work with Chowly’s leadership during the integration process.
The two businesses service over 16,000 restaurant locations, and integrate over 350,000 orders daily with third-party marketplaces and POS systems. This is Chowly’s first acquisition, the company said.

Dive Insight:

With this acquisition, Chowly, which integrates with various platforms like Grubhub, Uber Eats, DoorDash and Google, will gain product features including a customizable user experience and a machine learning engine that can provide recommendations to increase basket size. Chowly’s restaurants, which are largely small- and mid-size businesses and independents, will also gain access to online ordering and advanced data analytics.

“Koala’s open platform meshes perfectly with Chowly’s, while also giving restaurants a simpler experience for their off-premise strategies,” Sterling Douglass, Chowly co-founder and CEO, said in a statement. “We plan on bringing Koala’s best-in-class enterprise-grade ordering to the SMB restaurant space and blend our partnership ecosystems while continuing to support their success in the enterprise restaurant space.”

Chowly and Koala are working to create a new product for SMB brands, which will be announced in the coming months.

This acquisition also extends the ongoing trend of consolidation in the restaurant technology space. Last year, Lunchbox acquired NovaDine, DoorDash bought Bbot, Par Technology acquired Menu Technologies, Olo agreed to buy Omnivore and Toast purchased Sling. Many operators want to work with fewer platforms, so there is a growing demand for consolidated services.