Purpose-driven brand Odeko offers consumer mobile ordering and supply chains for local cafes, bakeries, and coffee shops. Odeko’s platform makes it easier and less expensive for local suppliers and retailers to run their businesses. Small establishments are now able to accurately predict their inventory needs and place orders by layering past sales data with weather and public calendar info, which are helpful indicators for the number of customers through the doors and what they may order ( hot weather normally means iced coffee). Odeko’s platform also enables establishments to provide exceptional customer service through the use of hyper-personalized data that an even tell customers exactly who made the croissant on that specific day and what farm the milk in their coffee comes from. Chains La Colombe and Birch Coffee have implemented the solution and have already seen a 50% reduction in food waste and a 13% increase in profits. Odeko democratizes the technology tools for small businesses to compete against the scale of large chains and this helps in building local communities of neighborhood businesses instead of big-box stores.
AlleyWatch caught up with CEO Dane Atkinson to learn more about the platform, how Odeko is enabling small businesses to survive the pandemic, and the company’s latest funding round, which brings the total funding to $26M across three rounds. In conjunction with the funding, Odeko announced its merger with Cloosiv.
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
Odeko raised $12M in Series A funding during the COVID-19 pandemic led by GGV Capital, with participation from First Round, Primary Venture Partners, Box Group, Addition Ventures, Two Sigma Ventures, Bar 9, Balius, i2bf, and Y Combinator.
Tell us about the product or service that Odeko offers.
Odeko is consumer mobile ordering and supply chain for cafes, bakeries, and coffee shops.
What inspired the start of Odeko?
Odeko was formed to ensure that small businesses can power their communities and local economies.
How is Odeko different?
Odeko is a purpose-driven brand. We believe that coffee shops are at the heart of every thriving community.
And only Odeko gives them the big tools to grow their business—and focus on their customers through our consumer mobile ordering and supply chain for cafes, bakeries, and coffee shops.
What market does Odeko target and how big is it?
Odeko’s initial market is US Cafes representing $47B in sales across 40K locations.
What’s your business model?
Fees for services with a commitment to have fees that help our customers grow,m not hinder their growth by being so high like other marketplace services like Grubhub and Postmates.
How has COVID-19 impacted the business?
Our customers, the small business cafes, bakeries, and coffee shops have been devastated by COVID-19. Many are trying to figure out how to successfully reopen and rebuild the businesses they once had, while others have closed permanently. Everything we do is geared to helping them not only survive COVD but also thrive. It’s hard enough for these coffee shops to have to compete against mega-companies like Starbucks which only extract top dollar from every community.
What was the funding process like?
This was an atypical process. We were very lucky in having GGV believe in the bigger vision and help us navigate through the uncertainty. This round took 3x longer to complete than our prior one.
What are the biggest challenges that you faced while raising capital?
Servicing a struggling if not entirely transforming industry.
What factors about your business led your investors to write the check?
We are focused on small businesses. Our business has a purpose and contributing to local communities and economies. We have executed quickly, and pandemic aside, we have grown incredibly fast which helped.
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
In the next 6 months. our consumer mobile ordering app will have a very large national footprint and North East cafes are all running their supply chain through Odeko.
In the next 6 months. our consumer mobile ordering app will have a very large national footprint and North East cafes are all running their supply chain through Odeko.
What advice can you offer companies in New York that do not have a fresh injection of capital in the bank?
No one comes out of this the same, so come out stronger. Conserve cash, find opportunities, work harder, fight harder.
Where do you see the company going now over the near term?
Our vision is to support every spoke in the local economy wheel – from the dairy farmers and bean suppliers, to the bakers and the baristas, all the way to the mobile ordering app in a consumer’s pocket.
Odeko’s farm-to-customer platform will provide cafés with the ability to expand their customer base while driving top-line revenue to be more competitive, mitigating the hardships that many operators are facing due to the pandemic.
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