SpeedETab announced this morning that it’s being acquired by Wix, the website builder. The deal amount is not being disclosed.
The homegrown startup allows customers to order ahead of time from thousands of restaurants all from one app. For merchants, SpeedETab offers a SaaS product akin to Shopify with a white-label solution and provides a point of sale (POS) system for in-person and mobile ordering. It is now used in all 50 states.
SpeedETab, founded in 2013 and launched in March of 2015, is the brainchild of Miami native Adam Garfield. Years before the pandemic hit, Garfield already saw a need for ordering ahead. His need came from his own impatience while waiting to pay for his morning coffee.
“I would be late in the morning to go to work because I was waiting in line to order my coffee. It was always, ‘Why am I waiting in line to give you money?’ This was in 2013 before there was the whole order ahead thing that you see now,” Garfield, CEO SpeedETab, said in an interview.
Garfield, who is a product of Mast Academy – the Virginia Key-based magnet school – and the University of Florida, later worked in finance in Boston before co-founding the company with Ed Gilmore, CTO at SpeedETab. Gilmore studied computer science at Purdue.
While UberEats, DoorDash, Postmates and Grubhub are convenient, the problem, Garfield explained, is “…that they destroy restaurants.” Third party delivery services often take a big chunk of change from the restaurant, Garfield said. During the pandemic’s early assault on the hospitality industry, SpeedETab helped hundreds of struggling restaurants locally and across the U.S. get up and running with their own online ordering systems for free, often within 24 hours.
Wix, the Tel Aviv-based company primarily known for being a do-it-yourself website builder, is using the acquisition of SpeedETab, “…to enhance Wix Restaurants, the solution to create and manage a full-service restaurant platform, by delivering a complete online experience for restaurant owners and ensuring their online success,” the company said in a statement.
Wix Restaurants grew tremendously over the last 2 years as restaurants ran to get all their offerings online. According to the company, “Overall, the number of restaurants selling online grew by 143% [and] the number of online orders grew by 378%.”
To date, SpeedETab has raised under $3 million. In 2017, Paymentez, a Miami-based payments platform, acquired a large stake in SpeedETab as a strategic investment, but Garfield and Gilmore continued to run the startup. The company employs 15 people, all of whom will stay on and become part of Wix.
“We needed to meet these evolving industry needs by investing in emerging restaurant technologies, specifically in POS integrations and expanded delivery solutions. SpeedETab’s technology, as well as their company culture, were a natural fit to continue to position Wix Restaurants as the ultimate restaurant solution. We are happy the SpeedETab team can work from Wix’s largest US office, which happens to be in Miami,” said Ronny Elkayam, SVP Strategic Products at Wix.
The SpeedETab team at Wix is looking to hire account managers, channel partners and engineers, Garfield said.
“I’ll be a part of Wix helping lead Wix Restaurants, but I’m also excited to be more a part of the Miami tech ecosystem.”
Photo at top of post is of SpeedETab co-founders Adam Garfield and Ed Gilmore. Nancy Dahlberg contributed to this report.
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