OrderAhead


OrderAhead was a mobile ordering and payments company that enabled millions of users to order food for pickup from thousands of local restaurants.
OrderAhead was acquired by Square Inc. in late 2016.

History

OrderAhead was founded by Jeffrey Byun and Henry Lee in 2012 after they completed Y Combinator. The founders started OrderAhead so that customers could easily order food for pickup without having to wait to order, wait to pay or wait to have their food prepared.
OrderAhead started in Palo Alto, California, but quickly expanded to the greater Bay Area after raising a seed round in the summer of 2012. After raising Series A funding one year later in 2013, OrderAhead expanded nationally to major metropolitan areas like San Francisco, Los Angeles, Houston, Denver, Chicago and New York City.
OrderAhead’s vision was to reinvent the way the world shops.

Mechanics

OrderAhead was available as both an iOS app and an Android app.
To use OrderAhead, users would connect their credit card to the application, select the restaurant/items they want and place their order. Users would then be given a real-time estimate of when their order would be ready for pickup.
OrderAhead was free for all users.

Funding

OrderAhead raised $10.5 million in funding from Marc Benioff, Eric Schmidt, Jerry Yang, Adam D'Angelo, Geoff Ralston, August Capital, Matrix Partners, Menlo Ventures, SV Angel, CrunchFund, Initialized Capital and Y Combinator.