DoorDash announced on May 6 that it’s acquiring SevenRooms for $1.2 billion in cash.
SevenRooms helps restaurants and hotels manage reservations and marketing.
Why the move? To help restaurants grow their in-store business, along with delivery and takeout.
In its recent Q1 earnings call DoorDash CEO Tony Xu discussed the intentions behind the acquisition.
“It’s really about adding to our platform business. So our commerce platform started in 2016 when we introduced DoorDash Drive. Later on, we introduced DoorDash Storefront. So we went from logistics as a service to online ordering as a service. And with something like SevenRooms, and especially what we hear all the time from merchants, is this desire to understand everything that’s actually happening about their guests and inside their dining rooms, as well as their other channels. And so really, you can almost view this as marketing as a service and adding more intelligence into what restaurant owners can do in order to build their strong direct relationships with guests.”
In an interview with Food On Demand, Parisa Sadrzadeh, vice president of strategy and operations at DoorDash, hinted at upcoming features.
“We’re really early days with the acquisition, so I can’t share anything super specific today, but I am really excited about the fact that this does enable us to, over time, consider new consumer experiences like reservations within the DoorDash ecosystem, and other ways for DoorDash consumers to be able to engage in-store with restaurants.”
The deal could help smaller restaurants compete with the large chains.
“I think there’s a large opportunity to help grow every local business across all the channels they want to grow, whether that’s filling their tables in-store with new and loyal customers or growing their online presence. And really, this acquisition helps us continue to level the playing field for businesses of all sizes and give everyone access to the same sorts of tools that are commonly enjoyed by the largest players.”
Joel Montaniel, CEO of SevenRooms, said both companies have similar values and missions.
“We got really excited about the idea of accelerating our mission to serve and grow these merchants alongside DoorDash. And then from a cultural perspective, we really felt like we had met a kindred spirit. So many of the core values that DoorDash has are one and the same with SevenRooms,” he said.
Founded in 2011, SevenRooms works with over 13,000 venues around the world, including in Asia and Australia. The full suite of products includes reservations, waitlist and table management, review aggregation, revenue management, referrals, email and text marketing, and marketing automation.
The deal comes as Uber announced a partnership with OpenTable to link dine-in reservations with rides. These moves reflect a trend where third-party apps are evolving beyond just online ordering and delivery fufillment, positioning themselves as marketing and data hubs that influence more aspects of the guest experience.
