A startup has closed a £500,000 seed round to ‘ease the hospitality staffing crisis’.
YETiCO provides devices for contactless payment at hospitality businesses including Jones Family Kitchen and Maray Restaurants.
TableYeti is a pay-at-table restaurant payment device which makes paying faster, collects more data and drives higher tips.
The system enables feedback, bill splitting for groups and transparent and fair card tipping in conjunction with partners TipJar.
TapYeti devices, meanwhile, provide one-tap contactless payments for donations and are also sold via TipJar as Tap to Tip, providing the same function for service industry tips.
Founded by London-based entrepreneur Oliver Pugh, the YETiCO seed funding round was backed by prominent investors with a track record of supporting successful tech start-ups, including Simon Squibb, Skimlinks founder Alicia Navarro, Lego CTO Atul Bhardwaj and the founders of Masabi, the transit fare-payments-as-a-service company.
The seed round will fuel continued innovation in their industry-leading hardware and software, and enable investment in sales and marketing as the company continues to grow rapidly.
“There has never been a better time to be an innovator in hospitality payments – with huge demand for any tools that make life easier for customers and help reward staff,” said Oliver Pugh, CTO and founder.
“However, the Yeti team feel it’s critical that restaurants focus on using technology that enhances the dining experience, not ones that simply replicate the experience of home delivery in a restaurant environment.
“We’ve proven both TableYeti and TapYeti with global brand name customers and are excited to be scaling the company to deliver radically better payments to even more restaurants and bars.”