Ben NormanPhoenix-based point-of-sales technology firm MobileBytes recently announced their biggest deal to date with Church’s Chicken. The resale of MobileBytes’s technology will bring the company’s tech to 200 Church’s Chicken locations over the next five years.
Before Church’s Chicken, MobileBytes’ biggest client was Oregon-based Big Foot Java, which has just 35 stores in the state – this partnership will raise their biggest chain by over 470 percent. Over a thousand stores feature MobileBytes’s tech already, but this recent deal will help the six-year old company grow by 20 percent.
MobileBytes offers myriad sales services, including online ordering functionalities, kiosk and iPad cash register capabilities, and integrated data analysis tools. CEO Dan Calderone explains they make their technology optimal for restaurants across the nation. “We discovered working with our restaurant community that there’s a lot more to it than point of sales,” said Calderone. “A lot of it is based on online ordering, and we discovered that we have the perfect database for that. We spent a lot of time developing a really cool system that restaurants can utilize.”
Calderone notes that their technology not only helps restaurant workers operate cash registers more efficiently, but it also helps restaurants transition to cashier-less frameworks. He continues, “The labor market is shrinking, and restaurants are having a harder and harder time finding people to work as cashiers. Kiosks allow restaurants to roll out self-serving options.”
He also explains the importance of those who help sell the software to clients for startups like MobileBytes. Moreover, because the tech firm has just ten employees with limited resources and capital, they don’t have a wide network to distribute their technology. Calderone noted that resellers have been “very instrumental in helping us gain a foot in restaurant networks in the country.”
Calderone excitedly reported that some of MobileBytes’ first clients, including local restaurants like Phoenix-based Chambers and Tucson-based Baggin’s, still utilize the software today. In addition to these Arizona-based restaurants, 118 other restaurants feature the technology across the state.
MobileBytes has expanded rapidly in the past six years, and it will likely continue to do so as it develops its technology for the perfect restaurant experience. Calderone jokes that when one starts a software company, it could either be a “collapsing house of cards or turn into a fully functioning company.” Luckily for both businesses and restaurant customers, MobileBytes ended up as the latter.
Noemi Santaella
Joseph Kavetsky
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