These days, Will Clem is getting phone calls from a variety of restaurant chains that are interested in working with his startup, Bite Ninja. One could come from a business with just a few locations, and the next could come from a massive brand with thousands of locations.
The level of interest, however, usually doesn’t vary by size. Bite Ninja provides cloud labor for restaurants — and these days, labor in the food service industry can be hard to come by.
“It’s probably the easiest product you could ever sell,” said Clem, Bite Ninja’s co-founder. “The restaurants coming to us are saying, ‘We’re closed certain days of the week, and we’re cutting back our hours.’ What we’re providing can reopen their store. … Return on investment gets thrown out the window when the alternative is, ‘We’re closed.’”
Attracting big names
Bite Ninja’s roots were planted in early 2020, when Clem developed a way for the cashiers of his own local restaurant chain — Baby Jack’s BBQ — to work remotely. That idea led to the startup, which has since grown immensely.
When MBJ first talked to Clem in February, Bite Ninja — headquartered at 7251 Appling Farms Parkway — had around 10 full-time employees. When MBJ again spoke to Clem on Aug. 19, Bite Ninja had around 40 full-time employees, and completed an $11.3 million Series A round, bringing its total amount of funding to $15.4 million.
But that’s just a taste of its growth. Restaurants use Bite Ninja’s platform to outsource drive-thru and counter shifts to the startup’s network of trained 1099 contractors — or "ninjas," as the startup calls them — who take orders from their homes. In February, Bite Ninja had about 3,000 contractors on its platform, and a presence with 20 to 30 restaurant brands.
Now, that contractor number has ballooned to around 12,000, and it’s working with more than 50 brands. Some of these brands have only signed on for pilots, which means they could only be using Bite Ninja’s offerings in one location. But some of them are also major national chains — Clem couldn’t give names due to non-disclosure agreements — which could lead to major deals.
“That’s why we’re excited,” he said. “If that first store goes well, it can quickly grow to a lot of stores.”
Clem maintained that all the pilots are going well, and noted that five of the top 20 quick-service restaurant chains in the country have signed on to do pilots with Bite Ninja.
But just what exactly is the layout of this offering, which has managed to attract the attention of some of the biggest chains in the U.S.?
How it works
The service is primarily used for quick-service restaurants with drive-thrus, which Clem said are its “bread-and-butter.”
If a customer pulls up to a restaurant’s drive-thru, their order will be taken by one of Bite Ninja's contractors. They could see the face of this contractor on the menu screen, or just hear their voice, depending on what the restaurant chain chooses, as Bite Ninja has an audio-only option for the drive-thru.
The startup has also launched an indoor counter service, and in this case, if customers order inside, they’ll see the contractor’s face on a screen, where the cashier would usually stand. In addition to this, contractors can take phone calls for restaurants — which, Clem noted, has been particularly popular among pizza places.
The expanded options mean Bite Ninja can provide a variety of services, and for some, that means taking every order a restaurant has.
“Some of these restaurants that have been with us the longest, we’re actually taking 100% of the orders,” he said. “Whether it’s drive-thru, front counter, telephone, curbside pickup, or online order apps, we’ve got a full solution.”
Having enough for everyone
That’s not to say Bite Ninja hasn’t had challenges. Though Clem had always believed the startup had significant potential, he hadn’t predicted the sheer volume of people who wanted to work from home, which has placed Bite Ninja’s contractor work in high demand.
Bite Ninja often has to turn off its sign-up page for contractors, and when it turns it back on, “It’s opening the flood gates,” Clem said.
The platform will get hundreds of sign-ups in a day; sometimes, it will receive 500 in an hour. And the high level of demand can certainly be a good thing. But of the roughly 12,000 contractors already on the platform, there are some who feel they haven’t gotten enough shifts, and Bite Ninja has found itself striking a delicate balance.
What the startup will typically do is bring in one batch of contractors at a time, and then bring in another when it signs a new restaurant chain.
“It’s like an Uber or Lift, you don’t want too many drivers on the load, and you don’t want too few,” Clem said. “Otherwise, the driver is going to be upset, or the customer is going to be waiting too long.”
The problem of not always having enough shifts, however, is likely to be alleviated as more restaurants move beyond the pilot stage.
“When you’re doing pilots, those are kind of slow, that’s when they’re evaluating it, and making the decision,” Clem said. “But let’s say you’re a franchisee that has 1,000 restaurants, and you’re trying it out in your first one. Well, the next step is, they say, ‘Alright, we like it. How fast can you get into the other 999?’ That’s when all these 'ninjas' will get to work really quickly."
