MGMT Boston - W12, Q3 24 - Crunchtime / Alex Ewing, OneScreen.ai
Crunchtime / The Lantern with Alex Ewing @ OneScreen.ai
Welcome to MGMT Boston where we try to help 1,025+ of you manage your awareness of top Boston startups and local up & coming operators putting in the work. Glad to have you here!
TLDR:
Crunchtime - a late stage vertical software company at $100M+ ARR that serves multi-unit restaurant brands, helping them deliver industry leading operational excellence in every location
The Lantern this week:
Alex Ewing, CEO @ OneScreen.ai - OneScreen helps marketers use real world advertising (OOH) to grow their business. Alex shares a business update, advice he has for up & coming operators, and he wants to talk to some marketers. Reach out!
Jess Lynch, GP @ FoundersEdge - episode coming this Thursday!
Brought to you this September by Innovation Economy Banking at J.P. Morgan
9/25 EVENT: Operators, Founders & Investors - Join MGMT Boston & Women in Product to talk about Going Long to Build an Enduring Career on Wed, 9/25 (5:30pm - 7:30pm) @ Klaviyo. We’ll have Lily Lyman, GP @ Underscore VC, Stephanie Furfaro, CBO @ Rapid7, and Jennifer Kessler, VP of Product @ Klaviyo on hand to share their insights about what it takes to go the distance!
Shout out to Brendan McSheffrey for referring some new readers to MGMT Boston. Thank you sir!
Other Resources:
The Lantern Short Form Video Series (YT / IG) - Intro Trailer / Jonathan Chang, Markit AI / Aniketh Mohanty, Wayfair / Setting the Culture / Amber Nigam, basys.ai / The Agents Are Coming / Alex Ewing, OneScreen.ai
MGMT Boston Operators Club - a community and opportunity engine for 75+ Boston based up & coming venture backed operators
2024 Boston Tech Big Board - 2024 Companies to Watch
The Endeca Effect: Overview / Markets / People / Products / Conclusion / Bonus - Steve Papa Alumni Learnings
Q3 Startups Highlighted: Sense, mabl, Customers.ai, Wicket, Form Health, EnFi
Q3 Operators Highlighted: Greg Montemurro / Posh, Susan Roth / Quantified AI, Jason Jones / Klaviyo, Haley Wilcox / ezCater, Peter George / MX
2023 1H Recap / 2023 2H Recap / 2024 Q1 Recap / 2024 Q2 Recap
Crunchtime
Founder: Bill Bellissimo
Founding: 1995
Mission: Empower restaurant brands to operate every location like their best location
Employees: 350 & ~30% Local
Workplace: Hybrid
Stage & Capital Raised: Late Stage Growth & undisclosed amount raised
Investors: Battery Ventures
Key Customers: Burger King, Chipotle, Dunkin, Five Guys, Jersey Mike’s, McDonalds, P.F. Chang’ and many more
Glassdoor Rating: 4.2
Valuation (estimated): $500M+ (assuming average software revenue multiple on $100M+ ARR)
^ this is a useless number from MGMT Boston. There is no tangible valuation until the business is sold or goes public. Don’t forget it!
Crunchtime is a vertical software company that serves multi-unit restaurant brands, helping them deliver industry leading operational excellence in every location. From inventory to labor management to scheduling to operations, Crunchtime has been helping the restaurant industry stay tasty for almost three decades.
Founded in 1995 by Bill Bellissimo, he worked in restaurants from an early age. After a career on Wall Street, he returned to the space to become the President of a regional restaurant chain (src). While working as a restaurant executive, the ingredients for Crunchtime were procured..then deployed. The business didn’t raise any announced outside capital for 20 years until Battery Ventures came calling in 2015. Bill led the company as CEO for 27 years too before handing the reins to John Raguin, former Co-Founder & President of Guidewire, to help lead them through their next phase of growth in 2023.
The restaurant industry drives $1.1T of total sales per year (src). Dining out has become more popular aided by changing cultural trends and food delivery platforms. As a result, the restaurant management software market is $5B+ growing to $13B+ by the end of the decade (src). Whether for community or unique experiences, this secular trend of eating outside our homes looks intact.
Crunchtime is uniquely positioned to take advantage of these tailwinds, helping multi-unit restaurants manage their inventory, labor & scheduling, learning & development, and operations execution. They support 500+ brands across 125,000+ locations in 100+ countries. In summary, they’re delivering some serious scale.
Inventory Management is their flagship product line and helps their customers optimize inventory levels in order to better control costs and utilize data for better reporting. Their software helps with inventory counts and reviews as well as ordering & reconciliation. It even supports AI-powered sales forecasts, integrating with partner POS and accounting systems.
Powered by Operational Intelligence, Crunchtime helps surface operations data to help restaurants drive better strategic decisions. Restaurants can use Labor & Scheduling to create optimized schedules and more accurately forecast labor needs. More recently, they acquired DiscoverLink (a learning/training platform) in 2021 and Zenput (task management, food safety, field audits) in 2022 to help round out their platform suite.
Today Crunchtime supports 80% of the top 50 restaurant brands in the U.S. and more than one-third of the top 500. As a numerical reflection of that progress, they have surpassed $100M+ ARR as of February 2024 and almost 50% of Crunchtime’s customers are multi-product (src).
Notable new customers and those who expanded their use cases in 2023 include the likes of Bowlero, Jersey Mike’s, The Cheesecake Factory, Jimmy John’s, Dave & Buster’s, Miller’s Ale House, Cafe Rio Mexican Grill, and Ruby Tuesday. Ok, I’m hungry!
Crunchtime continues to hire here in Boston and around the world on their path up the mountain. Here’s to many more meals powered by Crunchtime!
Operators to Know (Locally):
Paul Adams, Director of Information Security
Katherine Barriga, Senior Product Manager
Wojtek Golly, Director of Engineering
David Krinitt, Senior Director, Learning & Development
Haixi Liu, Principal Software Engineer
Stephen MacDonald, Support Services Manager
Santosh Neupane, Group Product Manager
Mark Pellegrino, Director of Engineering
Kristen Reardon, Senior QA Manager
Elizabeth Russo, Service Operations Analyst
Ross Sanger, Software Architect
Anna Sergeychik, Senior Director of Engineering
Vinay Singh, Director Enterprise Software Development
Mary Anne Silverman, Product Manager
Garrett Tietjen, Group Product Manager
Leo Trottier, Director of Technical Services
Web Yeardie, Manager, Customer Success
My investigative powers continue to need work so apologies to the Crunchtime team I know I missed many up & coming operators internally
Key Roles To Be Hired:
If I were interviewing here are some questions I’d ask:
What are the big upcoming milestones for Crunchtime headed into 2025?
What features are restaurants asking about the most with the rollout of AI?
What has changed in the restaurant industry after the pandemic?
What is the long term vision for the company?
We’re optimizing for readability here so to learn more about Crunchtime you’ll have to D.Y.O.R. I’m excited to watch this team bring more restaurants into the AI & digital age. All hungry consumers applaud your efforts. I’m one of them. See you around town!
Alex Ewing, CEO @ OneScreen.ai
The Lantern is brought to you by Innovation Economy Banking at J.P. Morgan this September
Welcome Alex Ewing, CEO at OneScreen.ai on this episode of 🔥 The Lantern 🔥.
OneScreen helps marketers use real world advertising (OOH) to grow their business. Their software platform helps make targeted out of home inventory selection and deliver performance measurement, turning OOH advertising into a performance marketing channel.
🔍 What’s going on inside the startup? 🔎
It’s becoming more challenging for marketers to hit their CAC goals through traditional digital channels. What’s old is new and delivering that message to marketers about how OOH can play a part in their marketing mix is really resonating.
🤔 What advice would Alex give to up & coming operators? 🤔
Find ways to be helpful. Transforming from an attorney into an executive, he found ways to be useful in fundraising & business development. If you want to work hard and have an impact, you will get as much responsibility as you demonstrate you can handle
🤝 How can we help? 🤝
Alex wants to talk to every marketer out there to find out how OneScreen can help you! They’re engaging in a new phase of product development to incorporate real world advertising into your business. Reach out!
With J.P. Morgan’s guidance, your startup can go from growing pains – to growing without limits. With tech that powers your growth and bankers across the globe to help you disrupt every market, you can go from seed to IPO and beyond.
J.P. Morgan. Let’s Build Your Future Together.
Any feedback for me? One thing you liked? One thing you didn’t? Local startups or operators to highlight? Just reply to this e-mail!
See you next week!
-Matt