When Conshohocken entrepreneur and former IT consultant Shiva Srinivasan founded the mobile-based technology company
Zuppler back in 2009, the practice of ordering food from restaurants online was still in its infancy.
Nevertheless, Zuppler's service, which allows restaurants to customize their online ordering menus, was a fast success. It wasn't long, in fact, before the company was servicing some 4,500 restaurants worldwide, and thousands of hotels in the United States began using the Zuppler platform to expedite room service ordering.
But in the all-mobile, all-the-time retail environment of 2014, tech-savvy restaurateurs want something more than just a customizable and fully-integrated online ordering solution. They also want a way for their customers to pay online, preferably through a mobile interface.
So Zuppler recently joined forces with
LevelUp, a Boston-based tech firm. The self-described "largest mobile payment network in the nation" offers extensively trackable marketing campaigns along with its payment-processing system.
Now restaurants using the Zuppler interface can access extensive customer reporting analytics, "so it's a way for them to take control of their online business, and to take advantage of it," explains Srinivasan.
Zuppler's analytics interface even provides users with a heat map showing exactly where its customer base is grouped. And along with 24-7 customer service and support, Zuppler's beefed-up system can offer coupons and loyalty rewards, which customers can redeem while paying for food on a restaurant's website, all of which are mobile responsive.
Together, Zuppler and LevelUp now service "more than 18,000 restaurants and over 2 million customers combined," according to a release.
"But the most important fact," says Srinivasan, "is that for restaurants that use our service, they own their customers."
Writer: Dan Eldridge
Source: Shiva Srinivasan, Zuppler