MILAN – Charlotte-based Cloosiv merged Tuesday with New York Odeko to form a connected supply and demand management platform for small businesses like coffee shops, bakeries and cafes. Cloosiv is a mobile platform, founded in 2018, that allows users to order from independent coffee shops through its free app. The platform released to both Android and iOS users in March and gave users the option for curbside pickup for the first time.
Odeko is an inventory management system for cafes founded in 2019.
Now, said Tim Griffin, CEO and Founder of Cloosiv, the platform will have an even broader reach as it merges with Odeko. On Sept. 1, Cloosiv will officially become Odeko and roll out a new version of the app.
“This economy has meant devastation for coffee shops,” Dane Atkinson, Odeko Founder and CEO, told Crunchbase News. “We had previously met Cloosiv, and when COVID-19 hit we thought, here is a partner we like, and in this storm, it’s better to have more boats together so we can weather the storm.”
The company’s vision will be to help cafes and coffee shops expand their customer base, drive top-line revenue to be more competitive, and mitigate hardships due to the pandemic, Atkinson also said. The platform will enable clients to support their process from the farm to the baker to the barista to the mobile ordering app.
“With a shared vision and a front-row seat as witness to the impact of COVID-19 on our local communities, we knew that we needed to do more and we needed to do it faster, which is why we’ve created something new altogether – one company with one solution,” said Atkinson and Griffin in a joint statement .
“Our vision is to support every spoke in the local economy’s wheel – from the dairy farmers and bean suppliers, to the bakers and the baristas we love, all the way to the mobile ordering app in your pocket
It’s our goal to build the only farm-to-customer platform that makes it easier and cheaper for local suppliers and retailers to run their businesses, while offering unparalleled convenience and education for their customers.”
We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us, but we’ve already seen many wins for the cafés we support. Those wins will continue as we build new tools for our customers, but in the near term there are many ways we can start to help, like:
- Dropping our transaction fees to the lowest in the industry
- Keeping customers informed about the products they consume
- Sharing sales forecasts to help retailers produce less waste and happier customers
And that’s just the start. To keep pace with the growth we’ve seen and to provide stability to the café ecosystem, we’ve closed an additional $12M in funding alongside our merger, led by GGV Capital with participation from First Round, Primary Venture Partners, Two Sigma Ventures, Box Group and Addition Ventures. This funding is part of a larger $28M financing that will allow us to invest even more resources into the small businesses we work with every day.
Our unified team intends to have a lasting impact on local economies all across America. Join us as we relaunch the new company with a refreshed “Odeko” brand on September 1st. To celebrate, we encourage you to order ahead from one of the 1,000+ local cafés we support by using the Odeko mobile app or by using our new online ordering website – both the app and the website will be made available on September 1, 2020,” concludes the statement.
