Chowly, a Chicago-based delivery integration provider, announced its acquisition of Koala, a guest experience platform that allows established and emerging restaurant brands to elevate their digital ordering experience across web, app and kiosks. The combined business will represent over 16,000 restaurant locations on the platform, integrating over 350,000 orders per day across the U.S.
“We’re thrilled to welcome Koala to the Chowly team,” said Chowly co-founder and CEO Sterling Douglass. “Merging these two businesses together represents a major leap forward in the mission of both organizations as we help restaurants navigate today’s complicated digital world. Koala’s open platform meshes perfectly with Chowly’s, while also giving restaurants a simpler experience for their off-premise strategies. We plan on bringing Koala’s best-in-class enterprise-grade ordering to the SMB restaurant space and blend our partnership ecosystems while continuing to support their success in the enterprise restaurant space.”
“Chowly and Koala have long held a deep alignment of mission, core values and culture, making this an ideal partnership for helping our customers reach new levels of success,” said Nat Trienens, CEO of Koala. “We’re excited to take this next step in the evolution of our guest experience platform as we carry the momentum forward with Chowly’s world-class team and technology.”
Through this combination, tens of thousands of SMB and independent restaurant owners will gain access to what the companies call “a more sophisticated and holistic solution,” including enterprise-grade online ordering, advanced data analytics, and machine learning recommendation engines for increasing basket sizes.
“Sophisticated native iOS apps, open platforms, and multi-platform support have long been relegated to the largest of enterprises, but are now being democratized for the independent restaurateur,” Chowly said in a press release announcing the acquisition.
The leadership team at Koala, Walter Beller-Morales, Melanie Norton and Brett Spiegel will play a critical role in integrating the two companies’ solutions in conjunction with Chowly’s leadership. Koala’s CEO Nat Trienens will remain temporarily to help shepherd the integration of the two companies.
Chowly brings significant scale to the expanded organization, representing more than 12,000 locations and 3,000 brands.
