I previously wrote about Boom Supersonic, a startup pushing technology boundaries to make supersonic air travel safe and economical. This week’s post is about a different type of startup.
Sunday is a company that allows you to order food at restaurants and pay your bill using a QR code. You don’t need an app, just the internet. They launched only 6 months ago (April 2021), and have since raised $124m over two funding rounds.
Their focus is on reducing friction when paying a restaurant bill. The key marketing message
“Your customers can view the menu and pay the bill in 10 secs”.
Arguably they’re not doing anything technologically innovative (e.g. building cost-effective supersonic jets), but have raised a lot of money recently and are growing rapidly - and that’s why they’re worth looking into.
Corona boost
The company was founded by a group of restaurateurs, who needed an internal system to give diners the option to order food and pay their bill without any contact. They noticed some interesting behaviour: 80% of people preferred to pay using the QR code vs in person (it makes sense: waiting for the bill is one of the most tedious parts of visiting a restaurant). They realised this is something other restaurants could use too, so decided to spin it out as Sunday.
Dynamic pricing
Dynamic pricing is an interesting option Sunday could offer. This isn’t something on their roadmap, but the restaurant industry could be heading towards this. With dynamic pricing, menu prices aren’t fixed and instead fluctuate based on how much inventory a restaurant has of a particular item. Here’s an example: if nobody’s ordering salmon, its price would decrease towards the end of the day to encourage diners to order it. Airlines price dynamically, based on remaining seats. Why shouldn’t restaurants also do this? It leads to less waste, and ultimately helps restaurants plan better.
Will it work elsewhere?
The concept of reducing the amount of ordering and paying time works well in restaurants because they have a fixed capacity and need to maximise their turnover. Sunday’s marketing material suggests busy restaurants have been able to save ‘up to 15 mins’ per table.
I can’t think of any other industries where you have to wait a significant time to pay:
- Supermarkets often have queues for paying, but this issue has largely been resolved by self-checkout, and recently by Amazon Fresh
- Cafes and kiosks: their bottleneck is preparing drinks and food, and not on the payments side
So, what’s Sunday doing with the money?
The core product is already well developed, but they’re looking to roll out features such as loyalty programmes. Their main goal in the short term is getting into as many restaurants as possible in the UK, as well as expanding across Europe and the US. There are lots of competitors (e.g. StoreKit, Leslie) since the barriers to entry are very low, so it’s a matter of quickly winning market share. No matter who ultimately wins the race, expect friction-free restaurant checkouts soon.