Foodservice Tech Sell-Off - Affect on your restaurant?

Lots of technology news this week and also a seismic shift in what we could be dealing with very soon if we see a potential recession and seven dollar a gallon gas. The landscape has erie similarities to an era when old school POS was displaced in early 2000.

DoorDash buys Bbot to beef up in-store digital ordering capabilities

DoorDash is acquiring Bbot, a hospitality technology startup that simplifies digital orders and payments processes, the company announced Tuesday. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The deal will expand DoorDash's suite of first-party platform services, such as DoorDash Drive and DoorDash Storefront, to meet increased demand for integrated and simplified solutions. The aggregator also claims Bbot's technology will increase partner restaurant sales and reduce diner wait times to order and pay.

I see this as an early validation that Bbot did not want to go the IPO route with the battering of foodservice tech companies that have fallen as much as two-thirds in less than a year with the likes of OLO and Toast.



Next up is Toast - as CFO Elana Gomez states they are looking for tactical investments for market share growth. In my opinion, this is a bad strategy under the current economic overpriced landscape that is on the verge of a major hit as well as a shift from web 2 to web 3 that is clearly underway.

The company is staying its course amid a broader sell-off in the cloud-computing sector since November and volatility in the broader markets in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and lower margins. Toast’s shares are now in the $20 range, down from the $40 level in September that made it one of the largest IPOs of the year in restaurant technology.

Paul's Take: This is a problem that we are facing right now in the tech sector with foodservice and one that will not be realized until 2024-25 which will then be too late. A caution in investing in this sector right now due to the fact we could see an early disruption of an industry that was forced into growth before they and the technology advancements of the future were ready. There are clear changes beginning to shift the tech landscape once again and the COVID bandaid of tech companies that have been thrust into these uncertain times wreaks of a bad situation brewing.

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