Contact: Jordan McKee
ShopKeep has acquired Ambur, a restaurant-focused tablet point-of-sale (PoS) vendor. The addition is intended to expand ShopKeep’s capabilities in the full-service restaurant vertical, helping it target larger, multi-location prospects. One of the target’s founders, Ansar Khan, has already joined ShopKeep in a business development capacity, though Ambur will remain a separate entity for now. The deal comes little more than six months after ShopKeep bought payment processor Payment Revolution.
Ambur’s PoS software offers a variety of front-of-house and back-of-house functionality. On the front end, it supports features such as order management, item modifiers, delivery/takeout, table layout and reservations. Management-focused tools include reporting, user groups and permissions, item inventory, payroll and employee summaries. Ambur is payment processor-agnostic, and stores data locally on the device with a Dropbox backup.
ShopKeep has turned its focus to inorganic growth in 2015 as it scales toward an IPO-able size. Its pickups of Payment Revolution and Ambur, while dissimilar, are designed to broaden its addressable market and revenue prospects. The reach for Ambur is particularly strategic in this regard given the latent opportunities for tablet PoS in the table-service restaurant sector. As midsized restaurants grow increasingly dissatisfied with their legacy back-office systems, this vertical will become the next battleground for tablet PoS providers. ShopKeep is wise to move in this direction, as its current-generation software is not suitable for larger restaurants that demand a more focused service.
We’ll have a full report on this transaction in tomorrow’s 451 Market Insight.
For more real-time information on tech M&A, follow us on Twitter @451TechMnA.