After Brendan Bencharit opened an Allston hookah lounge in 2007, he quickly learned something important. With a plethora of paperwork to keep track of, he knew there had to be a better way to manage day-to-day ops.
It's while running Nile Lounge that Bencharit met Le Zhang, a Boston College grad who was running consulting firm Rapid Labs, and the two brainstormed ideas for a system that could help with remotely running a restaurant. In July 2013, they launched Squadle, which automates operations via touch-screen tablets and a wireless sensor (IoT) platform. And the startup already has some notable paying customers, from big brands like Sonic Drive-In to smaller ones like the Chicken & Rice Guys food truck.
The duo told me that before they went all in on this venture, though, they decided to figure out whether or not such tools would be useful. So they walked up and down Harvard Ave in Allston, stopping into a variety of businesses to gauge their interest. What Bencharit and Zhang realized is that for mom and pop restaurants, there’s less of a need to step away from the business, but at chains like Panera or Chipotle with multiple locations, it’s nearly impossible to maintain consistency across the board when so much data is still kept on paper.
Squadle offers multiple products via its platform, including digital logbooks to automate accountability and eliminate paper costs. The mobile dashboard allows users to quickly and easily access their restaurants’ data and performance metrics anytime, anywhere and on any device. A newer tool, the Zone Thermometer automates HACCP-compliant temperature records for refrigerators, freezers and other areas. Best of all, the Squadle platform pairs with other restaurant-related connected devices.
The founders told me that after they built the digital tablet with a touch screen, the next obvious step was to automate data input. As self-proclaimed “software guys,” they needed a little hardware help to make that happen. Last August, Squadle raised seed funding from Boston hardware venture fund Bolt, which invests up to $500,000 in early stage startups. Currently, Squadle has six employees, but they’re looking to grow out the team, specifically in the way of marketing and engineering talent.
“Our main focus right now is — how do we make our current customers happier?” Bencharit told me.
To that effect, the team is constantly conducting surveys to figure out what features to build for Squadle next. They also added that partnering with and integrating other existing products is a top priority right now. Just last month, the startup forged a partnership with Triton Systems, which makes a line of smart safes to restaurant owners and operators, which automatically count money so employees don’t have to, and makes sure that it’s secure.
The duo says that down the line, they might consider serving retail chains and other kinds of businesses, but for right now they’re laser-focused on restaurants.
“The end goal for us, really, is we want to be the central nervous system for back-end operations to run smoothly,” Zhang said. “We want to be there when you’re scaling up the business.”
Image of product via Squadle.
