A Newport Beach marketer is honing its mobile ordering platform first with restaurants dealing with the pandemic, before a broader aim of reaching local businesses across other industries.
Socialincs Inc., part of Newport Beach business development and marketing firm Opis Network Inc., launched its Restaurants Rising program in response to COVID-19 as means of offering small restauranteurs a mobile ordering technology platform, with a six months free promotion. The firm said it’s signed over 50 users so far.
Thirty hail from Orange County and include Bella Cuba, Inka Mama’s and Natraj.
Restaurants Rising’s tech platform is called Loqalli (pronounced “locally”); it collects and remits local and state sales and use taxes. The platform allows for the retention of more than 96% of the order proceeds, “giving financially stressed restaurants more revenue to pay rents, payroll, and offer more value to customers,” it says.
“Loqalli is designed to give the big-box technology to the micro businesses,” said Socialincs CEO Dave Naidu.
The broader Restaurants Rising program also provides safety best practices in the context of the pandemic, business consulting and other small business support.
Restaurants runs in Naidu’s blood with ownership of more than 200 restaurants across his extended family, hence the food focus. The user base will eventually be expanded out to spas, salons, retailers, grocery stores and pharmacies.
“Our focus right now is to be a one-trick pony to make sure we’re doing everything right and build up our presence within the restaurant business,” Naidu said.
The company, which last year raised a pre-seed round, is currently beta testing with independent retailers, including one business Naidu said is in the Irvine Spectrum area.
“The platform was originally designed for local merchants who were not able to afford very expensive platforms,” Naidu said.
“They were using Groupon or Travelzoo or a lot of other platforms we’re all familiar with for getting discounts.”
