When the global pandemic hit, independent restaurants and stores that didn’t yet have online ordering systems found themselves scrambling to stay afloat when consumers stopped patronizing the establishments.
that’s the place big bang has come in, providing supply chain management and other operational tools to independent coffee shops and cafés. These include smart operations software that helps customers manage inventory, gain data insights and order equipment and supplies more cheaply from more than 400 suppliers while reducing their environmental impact.
“The hospitality industry in general hasn’t had a very long year,” Odeko CEO Dane Atkinson told TechCrunch. And offer them cheaper prices so they spend less on their cups every day because milk and eggs and everything else will keep driving up their costs.”
Today, the company, which Atkinson founded in 2019, works with 10,000 small businesses and is growing revenue more than 300% year-over-year. Odeko has been able to save customers up to 21 percent on the cost of goods and save up to 10 hours a week managing suppliers, he said.
It operates in 16 local markets and has expanded into six of them in the past year, including Miami, Portland and Dallas. It is also available in the rest of the United States through e-commerce and other solutions.
Dashboard for Odeko. Image credits: big bang
Odeko recently raised $53 million in Series D financing, bringing its total equity investment to date to $177 million, including $12 million in Series A funding 2020. The round was led by existing investor B Capital and included existing investors GGV Capital and Tiger Global Management, with new investors including Amex Ventures, KSV Global and FJ Labs.
While Atkinson would not go into specifics, he did say the company is valued at a 25% premium over Odeko’s last round $77 million in Series C financing Capital is announced in 2022, according to Crunchbase.
Atkinson intends to use the new capital for technology development, scaling the business and entering new markets.
“The climate over the past year has proven that our model works very well,” Atkinson said. “We’ve built a really good foundation on that now, with quite a bit of capital, and now we’re going to re-expand and add new markets and new adjacent territories in the second half of the year. It’s sensitive, but we’re investing extra money to take that formula and run it elsewhere.”
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