TouchBistro Closes An Additional $1.5M In Funding, Bringing Seed Round Total To $6M

Toronto-based iPad POS startup TouchBistro has raised an additional $1.5 million in funding, adding to its existing seed funding and bringing the total to $6 million raised to date. TouchBistro’s new funding comes from Walden Venture Capital and Kensington Capital Partners, and should help the startup expand its offerings, with a planned office opening in San Francisco in 2014.

The company already just opened a New York-based office to help fuel its American expansion, and in 2013 alone, its TouchBistro software processed around $500 million in transactions from over 1,000 merchant clients. The main clients for TouchBistro include restaurants, fast food joints, food trucks, coffee shops and others in the food services industries.

TouchBistro is already an international company; the startup debuted its app in the App Store two years ago, and it has since become the top ranking food and beverage app in terms of gross revenue in 27 different markets. Still, CEO Alex Barrotti is targeting a full doubling of its existing customer base (i.e., 2,000 plus clients) on the books by the end of next year. Their progress so far has made that seem a reasonable goal: in January, it beat its previous new customer sign up record by 34 percent.

Of course, TouchBistro isn’t without competitors; there are loads of iPad-based POS systems for small business owners cropping up, but one of the ones doing the best currently is Revel Systems. The California startup already has considerable traction in the U.S., and though it began in food service, has since expanded to retail and beyond. Locally, I see TouchBistro powering around 50 percent of independent restaurant POS systems that I encounter (that aren’t using legacy, non-iPad based systems), so it’s getting good traction at home. Growing will depend on how well it can scale internationally, and that’s where it’s intent on spending to make that happen.