BentoBox, a Startup That Helps Restaurants Build Better Websites, Raises $1.2 Million Clients include Danny Meyer's Hospitality Group, as well as New York City hotspots The Spotted Pig and The Breslin.
By Laura Entis
Opinions expressed by BIZ Experiences contributors are their own.
BentoBox, a startup from Techstars NYC's class of 2015, restaurants build better websites. The company differentiates itself from horizontal website builders like Squarespace and Weebly by catering exclusively to restaurants and anticipating their online needs, such as the sale of online gift cards and menu management tools.
Today, BentoBox announced that it has raised a $1.2 million seed round led by Armory Square Ventures, an early stage venture fund with participation from Ben Leventhal, co-founder of Eater, and Camilla Marcus Siegel, of Union Square Hospitality.
"Although consumers use the web to find and research restaurants, most restaurants fail to convert their web traffic into paying customers" Krystle Mobayeni, BentoBox Founder and CEO, said in a statement. "The restaurant industry is leaving billions of dollars on the table."
While BentoBox has managed to build a list of notable clients in New York City, including The Breslin, Dirty French, The Spotted Pig, The Meatball Shop and Danny Meyer's Hospitality Group, it plans to extend and strengthen its presence in additional cities.
Founded by Mobayeni and Pierre Drescher, BentoBox was a part of Techstars NYC 2015. It's far from the only startup in its class to raise money. Recently Spoon University, a crowd-sourced food network for millennials, raised $2 million and Stream, a data store designed for building and scaling personalized feeds, raised $1.75 million.
