Gusto, a Bethesda-based company that makes point-of-sale systems for fast-casual restaurants like
Elevation Burger and
Halsa, announces the close of a $2 million Series A round led by
Signatures Capital. Bethesda-based
WealthEngine and Reston-based
New Atlantic Ventures also participated in the round. The company, which was founded in 2012 by Bill Draper, will use the money to scale.
"This gives us the growth capital that we need," Draper says. "We'll be able to take it to the next level now."
Draper is a veteran of point-of-sale technology systems, having spent nearly ten years at
Micros Systems (which was
acquired by Oracle in June 2014 for $5.3 billion) working on new software development. "It's a big market, it's a growing market," says Draper, of point-of-sale systems. "The challenge that big companies have—not just in their point-of-sale systems—is that they kind of become victims of their own success. It becomes harder and harder for them to make major changes when the market shifts, when technology starts to move faster and faster, which it has in the last two years. Their business models and technology get stuck."
Draper built Gusto, which is cloud-based, to integrate front-of-house, back-of-house, sales, labor management, business accounting and analytics systems, with built-in "hooks" for integration with third-party apps and systems. So if a chain wants to try out a new loyalty app or a new mobile payment system, they can integrate it with Gusto.
"Integration is a sore spot in the industry today," Draper says. "A lot of the current POS systems ... weren't designed with integration with third-party products in mind. It's a challenge for the big companies to integrate well. We're seeing so many great third-party products being built up around restaurants now. We built [Gusto] with open architecture in mind, to make that integration much faster, so if the next great mobile payment solution comes along, and our restaurant customer wants to offer that customer experience to their customers, we’re ready for it."
Gusto's current client list includes the aforementioned Elevation Burger and Halsa, as well as
Flight Wine Bar and
16 Handles, a New York-based frozen yogurt chain with two locations in Maryland.