WineView, a Birmingham-founded startup, has secured seed round funding.
The startup closed the round totaling $500,000 earlier this year, which is being primarily used for growth and product improvements, according to a release from the company.
“We’ve been fortunate to have great investors from day one, and closing this round earlier in the year has helped us focus on continuing to get the word out to our restaurant customers across North America," said Gary Campbell, co-founder and CEO of WineView.
The company has been busy since January when it launched a partnership with cloud-based, publicly traded Toast (NYSE: TOST). Since that time, WineView has grown its footprint to more than 16 states and has seen demo requests coming in from all 50 states and parts of Canada.
“It’s really exciting to see how operators are coming to us to help them solve a pretty major issue that restaurants have faced for years: training new or seasonal servers in wine," Campbell said. "Whether I’m talking to a customer in LA, Boston, Tampa or D.C., almost every restaurant we meet seems to have these same problems. Given this feedback from our customers, we are continuing to improve our wine training for staff to make it reliable and repeatable. It has been really encouraging to see that so many restaurants need this solution.”
WineView calls itself an "all-in-one solution" for wine programs that can be used in multiple ways to increase wine sales in restaurants. Customers enable the integration from their Toast point-of-sale, and their wine list and menu are matched with the WineView database of more than 400,000 wines and 250,000 menu items. The goal is to allow restaurant owners and staff to manage their wine pairings, create custom tasting notes and provide wine training for staff.
“WineView was literally built to 'change the script' when it comes to wine in restaurants," said co-founder and chief operations officer Angela Grace Caine.
The company claims that WineView guarantees a 10% to 20% increase in wine sales within two months if it is used correctly.
"Think of it as having your staff custom-trained on your specific wine list and menu without you, as the owner, having to do anything," Caine said.
