Queue-skipping app Bamboo raises €500,000 in seed round

29 Mar 2018

Image: Bamboo

The Bamboo app that helps you beat the queue at lunchtime is plotting international expansion.

Dublin food ordering start-up Bamboo has raised €500,000 in a funding round led by Enterprise Ireland and involving six angel investors.

The company, a previous Siliconrepublic.com Start-up of the Week, has created an app that lets you order lunch and coffee in advance to beat the queue and have the goods waiting for you to collect.

The app also has a B2B component in that it lets businesses supplement employees’ lunches with credit to buy and collect from nearby food and coffee outlets.

Bamboo was founded in 2016 by college graduates Luke Mackey and Alan Haverty and they launched their initial product in early 2017 after receiving Enterprise Ireland Competitive Start Fund support.

Mackey told Siliconrepublic.com that the company has recently doubled its engineering team and that across Dublin, the app has achieved 20,000 downloads with strong signals of user retention.

“We have a core base of 1,500 users who use the app daily to buy lunch or coffee.

“Our plan is to expand to Singapore and London later this year.

“If that goes well, we will look at raising a Series A to enable us to scale into Europe, the UK and south-east Asia.”

B2B benefits

Queue-skipping app Bamboo raises €500,000 in seed round

The Bamboo team. Image: Bamboo

Mackey said that the app has the dual benefit of helping restaurants and coffee shops to keep costs down by reducing wait times but also allowing people to get what they want without queueing.

There are no added fees for the user and the app has a built-in rewards programme.

“Our immediate plan is to build a referral programme to take advantage of the highly shareable nature of the app but also focus heavily on opportunities in the B2B space.

“Companies can easily add employees to Bamboo and create an allowance of €5 or €10 per day, and staff can then order from nearby coffee shops and restaurants and just grab their lunch.

“This is actually quite popular among businesses that are eager to attract and retain staff with perks but don’t have fancy canteen facilities,” Mackey told Siliconrepublic.com.

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com