Chicago-based restaurant platform Tock has raised $10 million to help high-end restaurants offer services like “elevated carryout.”
The funding round was led by Valor Siren Ventures, which is backed by Starbucks.
Tock has been around for more than five years facilitating bookings, but quickly added carry-out and delivery services when the coronavirus pandemic hit the U.S.
Nick Kokonas, co-founder and CEO of Tock and owner of Chicago’s most expensive restaurant Alinea, told Cheddar in an interview Friday that he’s bringing the same approach that Alinea has taken to fine dining establishments around the globe.
“We’re adding 50 to 60 restaurants every single day around the world to enable them to do a cost-effective carryout and delivery program,” Kokonas said.
While competitors like Uber Eats and GrubHub may be more well-known, Tock attracts restaurant clients with its flat three percent fee on orders it facilitates.
“We understand that restaurants want to control an experience for diners that is something different than just throwing a burger in a tin foil box,” Kokonas said. “People are getting really creative and bringing some joy to their communities.”
After weighing how the coronavirus pandemic would significantly impact business at Alinea, Kokonas and his team realized federal loans would not be enough to retain all of their employees.
“We very, very quickly realized that no amount of help or aid we’re going to get is going to be sufficient to get our employees back for the long-haul,” Kokonas said, adding that he was able to retain all of his employees by establishing a 20 percent blanket paycut.
As restaurants around the country begin opening up dining areas again after coronavirus-related shutdowns ease, Kokonas thinks the concept of elevated carryout will stick around for a while.
“A hybrid between doing an elevated carryout, special experiences that you can pick up and enjoy at home, and then limited indoor and outdoor dining,” Kokonas said. “I think that’s going to happen over the course of the summer.”
About 780,000 pressure washers sold at retailers like Home Depot are being recalled across the U.S. and Canada, due to a projectile hazard that has resulted in fractures and other injuries among some consumers.
President Donald Trump has fired one of two Democratic members of the U.S. Surface Transportation Board to break a 2-2 tie ahead of the board considering the largest railroad merger ever proposed.
Ford is recalling more than 355,000 of its pickup trucks across the U.S. because of an instrument panel display failure that’s resulted in critical information, like warning lights and vehicle speed, not showing up on the dashboard.
The Rev. Al Sharpton is set to lead a protest march on Wall Street to urge corporate America to resist the Trump administration’s campaign to roll back diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. The New York civil rights leader will join clergy, labor and community leaders Thursday in a demonstration through Manhattan’s Financial District that’s timed with the anniversary of the Civil Rights-era March on Washington in 1963. Sharpton called DEI the “civil rights fight of our generation." He and other Black leaders have called for boycotting American retailers that scaled backed policies and programs aimed at bolstering diversity and reducing discrimination in their ranks.
President Donald Trump's administration last month awarded a $1.2 billion contract to build and operate what's expected to become the nation’s largest immigration detention complex to a tiny Virginia firm with no experience running correction facilities.
Chipmaker Nvidia is poised to release a quarterly report that could provide a better sense of whether the stock market has been riding an overhyped artificial intelligence bubble or is being propelled by a technological boom that’s still gathering momentum.
Cracker Barrel said late Tuesday it’s returning to its old logo after critics — including President Donald Trump — protested the company’s plan to modernize.
