Givex Goes Public
Givex's biggest moment of 2021 was taking the company public. On December 1, the company listed its shares on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “GIVX.”
A Banner Year for Restaurant Tech
It’s worth noting that 2021 was a year marked by big investments in restaurant technology. Other recent headlines include: Paradox, a conversational recruiting platform, announced a $200M Series C investment. Union, a hospitality engagement platform, raised $22M earlier this month. Plate IQ raised $160M.
In addition to Givex's IPO, other high profile IPOs and acquisitions in the restaurant tech space include SpotOn acquisition of Dolce Software, and the digital and mobile commerce platform Appetize. HungerRush’s acquisition of Menufy. On the M&A front, FAT Brands bought Fazoli's for $130M. On the vendor side, Punchh was acquired by ParTechnology and Restaurant365 Bought Compeat. First Watch filed to go public, and Toast filed for an $100M IPO. Online ordering company Olo held its IPO in March.
The cloud-based operations management IT solution innovated and evolved over the past year. Givex provides brands with a fully integrated suite of customizable products, including gift cards, loyalty, point-of-sale (POS) and analytics. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Givex demonstrated its ability to adapt to the changing landscape and offer flexible and innovative technology. Givex has continued to expand its robust tech suite and partner with new international clients over the past year, increasing its total number of customer locations to 96,000 as of September 2021.
One of Givex’s biggest moments of the year came with the announcement of GivexPay, an integrated payment processing solution powered by Adyen for Platforms. Adyen for Platforms enables Givex to enhance its service offering, gain access to the latest payment innovations and scale globally with one integrated system. Additionally, with the partnership, Givex now provides its merchants with turnkey access to payment capabilities, including being able to accept payments in-store, online and through mobile. The addition of GivexPay also adds additional reporting power for merchants, giving them deeper insight into how customers transact and engage with the business.
This type of continued innovation has allowed Givex to support restaurants throughout the ongoing shutdowns of the past year, providing solutions that allow operators to streamline their workflow and navigate the staffing challenges and shortages created by the pandemic.
New clients include Meltwich, the Canadian-based grilled cheese franchise that, with help from Givex technology, expanded into the U.S. and will be launching an additional 50-plus locations in the coming years. Givex also announced a partnership with Barburrito, a Mexican restaurant chain with 164 locations across Canada that will utilize Givex as its preferred POS, online ordering, gift card and loyalty program provider. Foodtastic, the restaurant franchisor behind Second Cup, Milestones and Pita Pit, also agreed to implement Givex’s gift card, Customer WebSuite and GivexPOS system across all 650 of its locations.