Back in Business: How ResQ is Helping the Rapidly Rebounding Restaurant Industry
Emerging from COVID, we’re craving the kind of in-person contact that we’ve missed during lockdown. After more than a year of cooking at home and eating takeout meals, people are eager to come together and break bread in their favourite restaurants.
This is great news for restaurant owners hard hit by the pandemic and will present significant challenges as they ramp up to meet the enormous demand. Owners and operators need to focus on what they do best, delighting customers and building back their businesses. They cannot afford to take their eyes off the ball to focus on the time-consuming maintenance and repair issues that are part and parcel of restaurant operations. Enter ResQ
ResQ-ing Restaurant Owners and Operators
As a restaurant industry veteran himself, ResQ founder and CEO Kuljeev Singh has a deep appreciation for the operational challenges that restaurant owners and operators face. So much so, that he’s made it his mission to help them run their businesses more efficiently. That’s why he created ResQ, an end-to-end repair and maintenance platform that empowers restaurant owners and operators to request, manage, and pay for repair and maintenance services with easy-to-use software. The platform also uses data-driven insights to help users make better decisions, thus driving savings and efficiencies.
ResQ’s platform has been working extremely well. Restaurants that use ResQ lower their operating costs, reducing how much they spend on maintenance and repairs by between 10 and 30 percent each year. Additionally, they also save time and increase back-of-the-house operational efficiency by as much as 70 percent thanks to the process and communication improvements that ResQ enables at scale. And ResQ doesn’t stop there, for its vendor partners, ResQ helps business owners grow revenue, get paid faster and efficiently communicate with its customers.
It’s because of results like these that more than 3,000 leading global restaurant groups across North America already rely on ResQ. Among the Toronto-based company’s growing list of clients, you’ll find everything from fast food franchises to full-service restaurant chains including KFC, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, Wendy’s, Arby’s, The Keg, Cactus Club Cafe, CRAFT, Paramount, Franworks, Fresh, and Tim Hortons.
Despite the pandemic, ResQ’s revenue has grown by a tremendous 750 percent over the last 12 months. It has also tripled the size of its team and launched in eight new markets across the US and Canada, including in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Dallas, Chicago, and Phoenix, among others.
That’s particularly impressive when you consider that while the landscape for restaurant technology has exploded for front-of-house in recent years (e.g. catering, delivery, order ahead, and point of sale solutions that have flooded the market), the same hasn’t been true for the back-of-house. In fact, back-office restaurant operations are largely still manual, powered by pen and paper rather than software.
We’re Proud to Support ResQ
With dinner dates and restaurant outings coming back, the need for streamlined restaurant operations is very timely. That’s why we’re excited to have invested in ResQ and to be partnering with them in their mission. We see great things ahead for the business as it continues its rapid expansion across North America, and we’re not alone. ResQ also has the support of an array of industry veterans as investors and advisors. That includes Instacart’s Nilam Ganenthiran; Doordash’s Gokul Rajaram; Airbnb’s Lenny Rachitsky; SkipTheDishes co-founders Jeff Adamson and Andrew Chau; and the team at Homebrew, Golden Ventures and Maple Ventures. Collectively, these and other supporters bring relevant experience and expertise that will serve the ResQ team well.
