Phoenix-based Qwick — a tech startup that provides a platform that connects food and beverage workers with employers that need help right away — plans to ramp up its expansion plans after raising $40 million in series B funding.
The funding round, announced Tuesday, was led by Austin, Texas-based investment group Tritium Partners and was joined by the company’s earlier investors Album VC, Kickstart, Desert Angels, and Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund.
Qwick, which was founded in 2017, has been on an expansion tear. This year alone, the company’s platform launched in 10 new metros for a total of 23. The company has a roadmap to keep moving into more cities as well.
The company’s platform is described as staffing-as-a-service, and it touts the flexibility it offers to food and beverage professionals — such as bartenders, wait staff and others — by linking them to available shifts in real time and allowing them to be paid in as little as 30 minutes after their shifts.
The funding will be used to accelerate its already rapid pace. Qwick’s Co-Founder and CEO Jamie Baxter said his team is poised for more rapid growth.
“Staffing-as-a-service is the future of work in the hospitality industry. We’re excited by Tritium’s conviction in Qwick and belief in our mission to end understaffing,” Baxter said in a statement. “We are proud to have facilitated over 500,000 hospitality shifts to date and we plan to double that output in a matter of months as we match a growing number of businesses and service industry professionals for shifts in more and more cities around the country. Our projection is to fill over one million hospitality shifts in 2023 alone.”
Besides entering more markets, the company this year has more than doubled its count of hospitality business partners, and has increased its pool of ready-to-work professionals by nearly 70%.
Qwick ramps up revenue, headcount growth
Headcount has also jumped 123% at Qwick, which has 271 employees and is expecting to reach 300 by the end of this year, a company spokesperson told the Business Journal. Hiring will be both at the Phoenix headquarters and in market-specific locations around the country, with the aim of supporting new and existing business partners and professionals.
Qwick’s growth, which increased 10,000% over the past three years, landed the company on this year’s Inc. 5000 list, where it was the nation’s 32nd fastest-growing company, leading the 156 Arizona companies that made the 2022 list.
Both hiring and technology build-out have contributed to all this growth, the company said. The company this year hired its first chief technology officer to further develop its offerings.
Tritium Partners Managing Partner David Lack praised Baxter and the rest of Qwick’s leadership team for navigating the young company through some difficult times for hospitality businesses. In fact, Qwick did have a rough period in 2020 when the Covid-19 pandemic took hold, but the company made some vital changes that allowed it not only to get back on the mend but to start thriving by the middle of 2021.
“Qwick’s impressive growth and history achieving success through its innovative hospitality solution, even through an especially challenging few years for the industry, indicate that the company has truly changed the way people work,” Lack said in a statement. “Jamie and his leadership team continue to prove Qwick’s strength and effectiveness in this space.”
Baxter, who moved from California to Phoenix to build the company, was named as one of the Phoenix Business Journal’s Most Admired Leaders earlier this year.
