D.C.-born Rooam, a tab payment app for nightlife and hospitality venues, will expand out of the metro area for the first time this winter as it launches operations in Chicago and Los Angeles.
To bolster its November move to the Windy City, which will take place before L.A., it acquired competing payment app Tally, which has a foothold in Chicago.
Rooam lets users pay for food and drinks directly from their smartphones, eliminating the need to wait or catch a bartender’s attention. Users open the app, choose their location and open a tab, then show the bartender or server their Rooam number when ordering. On the way out, bargoers click the close tab button and a payment is sent.
“Tally has been one of our main competitors since we started, and we knew from a hospitality perspective that there are lots of restaurant groups in Chicago,” co-founder and CEO Junaid Shams said. “If you get a couple good restaurant groups on board, you can increase market penetration.”
Shams said Chicago will launch with 40 to 50 locations in four to six weeks. Its initial roster includes eight hospitality groups and several music- and bar-focused locations for a soft launch before extending to more venue types.
In July 2017, Rooam completed a $2.1 million seed round to support winter operations out west and integrate with cloud-based point of sale systems. Shams said that investors at the time wanted the company to start plotting its expansion to new markets. It had previously raised $1.2 million in a 2016 angel round.
Since launching in October 2016 in the D.C. metro, the startup has signed on more than 330 locations, including restaurant groups and music venues like The Anthem and U Street Music Hall. The acquisition will put Rooam’s platform in the hands of several Chicago restaurant groups, including Bottleneck Management and Samco Enterprises.
Growth isn’t slowing down, either.
In the last quarter, Shams said, user acquisition tripled from the previous quarter. And more recently, September’s user growth was triple the monthly average, and in October it’s on track to triple that number.
Rooam has 22 total employees, including 12 at its D.C. headquarters, teams in Chicago and L.A. and some remote engineers.
