Restaurant tech startup Tab Commerce secures US$1M pre-seed

4 Mins Read

April 19, 2023

Toronto-based Tab Commerce, a restaurant tech startup, has closed a US$1 million pre-seed round, led by Matchstick ventures. The Tech Factor finds out the details about the fundraise.

Toronto-based restaurant tech startup, Tab Commerce, has secured US$1 million in its pre-seed funding round. The funding round was raised via a simple agreement for future equity (SAFE) from US-based Matchstick Ventures. This brings Tab Commerce’s total funding to US$1.25M, including US$250K from Mucker Capital and other angels in early 2022.

Tab Commerce has launched a smart sales and payments platform, which targets restaurants and breweries. The company believes that many restaurants currently manage expenses in a highly manual and inefficient way. This leads to them spending extensive amounts of time compiling and organizing various PDFs and paper invoices. This process often leaves them with poor visibility into their expenses and the prices they pay for goods and services. Tab Commerce is trying to support restaurants in operating more efficiently and cost-effectively, especially during this period of high inflation.

The company seeks to address the above challenge by simplifying expense management for restaurants through an automated software. The software consolidates invoices and thus can reduce the administrative burden on restaurant managers. An AI-powered sales intelligence engine and an invoicing and payment platform are the software’s two primary features. Additionally, the software provides restaurant managers with access to expense data and insights into restaurant costs.

Moreover, the startup emphasizes that all transaction and customer data it processes stays within each customer’s own account. A customer’s data is not shared with others using their platform, and the company highlights that it takes data privacy, which is becoming a growing issue, very seriously.

Tab Commerce comes out of beta after five months of pilots

With this news, Tab Commerce has come out of its beta, which began in November 2022, and is launching publicly to customers. Throughout the five-month beta period, the team says it assisted dozens of restaurants in better controlling millions of dollars of expenses. These restaurants expenses include those for labour, equipment repairs, food & beverage purchases, technology subscriptions, and more.

When restaurants make purchases, Tab obtains the invoice straight from the supplier, saving them the trouble of having to manually scan, upload, and arrange invoices. Restaurants can also access a variety of spending data and purchasing insights, as well as automate supplier payments and invoice management procedures, with the help of their product suite.

Ty Wilson, co-founder of Tab Commerce, teamed up with Sam Unterman to launch the company. Both of Wilson’s parents are from the restaurant industry, owning several restaurant locations in Hamilton and elsewhere. Unterman has experience at Canadian tech startups like Boast.AI, Planswell, and Finaeo, and has also worked in the restaurant industry. Tab Commerce, previously known as SquareMarket, says that it serves several dozen restaurants across Ontario, including Boxcar Social and Beatrice Society Cafe. [Tip: Read our latest coverage of Canadian startup news & funding updates].