Ecolab Inc. and Techstars are rotating through their sixth cohort in the Farm to Fork Accelerator. Fifty-two companies have so far graduated from the program, but this year comes with the first startup from the Twin Cities.
Tavolo is a Minneapolis-based platform that helps restaurant owners automate their marketing with the assistance of artificial intelligence. The startup began in 2019 while the founders were still in college, initially as a contactless-ordering platform.
Of course, the no-contact market became a cutthroat arena in the following year, and Tavolo’s founders did some reflection on what they offered. They found as the big names cornered that market, restaurant owners were using Tavolo for their marketing efforts.
In the beginning of 2020, Tavolo had about 20 restaurant partners, which jumped to 150 by early 2022. By the end of last year, when the team was making the pivot to prioritize marketing, 300 restaurants had signed on.
Tavolo’s bread and butter is in email and text campaigns, but the team is also building out a service for content creation. It’s had success in its own marketing efforts too, with its latest TikTok receiving 237,000 views.
The platform aggregates data across a restaurant’s analytics, like inventory and online ordering, plus macro trends in the market to auto-generate marketing materials.
In a partnership with South Minneapolis-based Urban Skillet, Tavolo helped to market a new menu item and gave it a 50% revenue bump. It also has partnerships with Listo! Fresh Mexican Grill and Muhim’s Café, along with other restaurants.
The subscription is $300 a month, which CEO and co-founder Taranvir Johal said pays off. He added that a restaurant owner has two other options for marketing: “No. 1, hire an agency. That's going to cost a few thousand dollars every single month, which oftentimes local owners just cannot afford. The second one is they got to learn how to do it all themselves, which usually takes a lot of time. But then too, they need to pay for several different subscriptions to send out different types of marketing things that they want to.”
The Farm to Fork cohort just finished up "mentor madness," a three-week speed-dating style event that matches founders with mentors who have some expertise in the industry. Now, Tavolo is looking to pick a lead mentor as it moves into the implementation phase of the program.
“It's been honestly amazing for us,” Johal said. “As a founding team, we're all relatively young; we're first-time tech founders. Having the resources and access to the people that we do — through TechStars, through this cohort — is honestly incredible.”
