On a Friday night in early 2020, Will Clem encountered a problem at his Bartlett restaurant, Baby Jack’s BBQ. The bulk of his cashiers called in, saying they couldn’t make it to work — and he had to close for the evening.
“Think about how expensive it is to close a restaurant on a Friday night,” he said. “We got home and said, ‘We’re not going to let this happen again.’”
So, Clem developed a way for his cashiers to work remotely. This way, even if they couldn’t make it to the actual restaurant, they could still do their jobs.
The remote method proved to be successful, and Clem quickly realized something — it could be useful for many restaurants.
From 'inherently inefficient' to 'much more efficient'
Flash-forward to the present, and that realization has led to Bite Ninja, the local startup that provides cloud labor for restaurants and has swiftly gained momentum.
After initially receiving funding over the summer from the Silicon Valley-based tech accelerator Y Combinator — which helped launch companies like DoorDash, Dropbox, and Coinbase — Bite Ninja closed a $4 million seed round in November, and is gearing up to launch another, $5 million round.
Cofounded by Clem, Bite Ninja recently moved into an 11,000-square-foot headquarters at 7251 Appling Farms Parkway in Memphis, and has been in discussions with eateries throughout the country.
Restaurants can use Bite Ninja’s platform to outsource drive-thru and counter shifts to the startup’s network of trained 1099 contractors — it currently has about 3,000 of them — who take orders from their homes. They can be in the same city, or live on the other side of the country. They can work a variety of shift lengths, whether it’s one or two hours during the busiest periods, or a longer, more sustained time.
And when a restaurant manager posts a shift on the platform, Clem maintained, it’s not uncommon for 10 to 12 contractors to bid on it — with the manager then able to select who they want.
“Instead of restaurants begging people, they’ve got everybody lining up,” Clem said. “It makes an industry that’s inherently inefficient much more efficient than before.”
A face from far away
Though Bite Ninja does have contractors who can take reservations and phone calls at fine dining establishments, it’s primarily used for quick-service restaurants.
If a customer pulls up to a restaurant’s drive-thru, they’ll see the Bite Ninja contractor’s face on the menu screen, and hear their voice come through the speaker. If they order inside, at the counter, they’ll see their face on a screen, where the cashier would usually stand.
And with Bite Ninja contractors taking orders, Clem said, restaurants can then divert more of their staff members to other duties. For example, at his local Baby Jack’s BBQ spots — he has locations in Bartlett and Arlington — Bite Ninja contractors handle 100% of the orders, so more of his employees can be placed in the kitchen.
“When you do that, you may turn the kitchen crew from a three-person crew to a five-person crew,” he said. “And you can just about double the speed of the business.”
Bite Ninja’s contractors make at least $15 an hour, though this fluctuates with the company’s surge pricing model. If a restaurant needs to have a shift covered at the last minute, the cost is likely to be higher. The contractors receive training and certification to take orders at the various restaurants, and they can become certified to work with as many restaurants as they like. As time passes, their number of options is likely to increase.
Where they are, and what comes next
According to Clem, most of the major brands in the U.S. have reached out to Bite Ninja; and currently, it has a presence with 20 to 30 different chains. The startup begins with a pilot with one of their locations; and then, if it’s successful, gradually rolls the platform out to the others.
Already, it’s completed a pilot program with a chain in Oklahoma called Taco Mayo, which has about 40 locations throughout the state, and has decided it wants Bite Ninja’s platform in all its restaurants. The company is joining them as quickly as possible.
But rolling out its platform across larger chains — which can have hundreds or even thousands of locations — will take more funding. And that’s where Bite Ninja’s new, $5 million round comes in. The hope is that it will help restaurant run the pilots smoothly, and efficiently integrate the platform into a broad swath of locations.
And though Bite Ninja’s platform could be seen as particularly relevant amid the COVID-19 pandemic and labor shortage, Clem sees it as a solution for the long run — not just the present.
“This is definitely not a pandemic solution,” he said. “This is a problem restaurants already had. We really see this as a way to make our industry more efficient."
