DoorDash Buying Contactless Ordering Firm Bbot

DoorDash is set to acquire Bbot, a contactless ordering and payment technology provider, for an undisclosed amount, the food delivery giant said in a press release Tuesday (March 1).

“The addition of Bbot’s products and technology to the DoorDash platform offers merchants more solutions for their in-store and online channels, including in-store digital ordering and payments,” DoorDash said. “Together, Bbot and DoorDash will be able to better support the evolving needs of restaurateurs and other food and beverage venue operators.”

Read more: DoorDash Integrates With Google to Offer Frictionless Ordering, Payment

Tom Pickett, DoorDash’s chief revenue officer, said the deal will bring the two companies’ combined services to a wider selection of merchants in the hospitality space, such as bars, hotels and ghost kitchens.

“Over the past few years, the hospitality industry has seen the benefits of growing their online channels as well as digitizing their in-store operations,” said Steve Simoni, CEO of Bbot. “Joining forces with DoorDash enables us to more rapidly scale our solutions so that, together, we can equip more businesses with more low-cost tools to help them provide excellent customer experiences and compete in today’s digital world.”

Founded in 2017, Bbot offers an in-store digital order solution designed to help merchants increase sales while offering shorter wait times for customers and faster table turnaround time for staff. Merchants can also use Bbot to use all their tables and extend their hours even in the face of staffing shortages.

See also: Growth of Ghost Kitchens Threatened by Outdated Digital Payment Tech

PYMNTS spoke to Simoni last year about the rise of ghost kitchens and some of the challenges facing that industry.

“Ghost kitchen operators are in a new, growing industry, where a lot of things are changing right now,” Simoni said. “Right now, the biggest barriers for ghost kitchen operators are being able to cleanly and easily get the orders showing up inside the restaurant from all the different channels … especially as they’re all racing to grow their unit count.”