Lunchbox is adding to its portfolio of online ordering, delivery integrations and multi-channel marketing through the acquisition of NovaDine, a North Carolina-based provider of digital ordering management for multi-unit restaurant chains.
As Lunchbox accelerates geographic growth across the country, the company says this is the first of many steps in its plans to invest in new technologies for restaurants.
Now combined, Lunchbox and NovaDine will offer an alternative to the currently available enterprise solutions and enable restaurant operators to manage all digital guest experiences from a single operating system across the entire customer lifecycle.
NovaDine was founded in 2007, and currently works with multiple prominent restaurant chains including Firehouse Subs, Torchy’s Tacos, Taco Bueno and Steak & Shake, to help power their online and mobile ordering, catering, delivery and apps.
Operators that opt into NovaDine will have access to the following features:
- Order Aggregation: Allows operators to consolidate all third-party marketplace orders with DoorDash, Grubhub, ezCater, Uber Eats, Postmates, and SkipTheDishes and pulls all order information into a restaurant’s point of sale system. Menus are automatically kept up to date, including 86’d items and business hours.
- Group Ordering: Allows multiple people to easily order food together under the umbrella of a single order.
- POS Integration: Ties your POS, online ordering, and mobile presence together into a single solution. Full POS integration, hands-off menu exporting.
- Cross-Channel Order Throttling: Allows restaurant chains to limit the amount of orders they will be able to accept in a specified amount of time. This feature allows restaurant chains to set a limit (rule) on the maximum dollar-amount of orders they can fulfill within an allotted time frame.
- Customer Engagement: Ability to integrate with any loyalty provider, currently integrated with Punchh and Paytronix.
- Comprehensive Delivery Support: Delivery as a service integration with DoorDash and Uber Eats. In-house delivery support with delivery driver management. Defined delivery map polygons or radius rules with adaptable order minimums and delivery fees.
- Catering Management: With call center capabilities and integration with NovaDine’s House Accounts module.
This is Lunchbox’s second acquisition, following its purchase of Spread, an online marketplace that connects restaurants with diners and offers delivery and takeout services that avoids the fees associated with third-party delivery providers.
“Traditionally, restaurants have faced the enormous hurdle of having to choose between multiple different technology tools to run their businesses, understand their digital clients and scale operations. NovaDine has built an entire platform that enables the operator to manage all digital orders from a single operating system,” said Lunchbox CEO Nabeel Alamgir. “As we continue to expand our operations NovaDine will have a huge hand in taking us to the next phase of growth into enterprise markets.”
“Lunchbox’s incredible marketing and sales team will allow us to unlock the full potential of the products we offer to our customers”, said George Istfan, president at NovaDine. “We’re also really looking forward to adding a robust marketing component to the business and seeing the full potential of our platform come to life.”
