Launch HN: Boostly (YC S22) – SMS marketing for restaurants
Hey HN, we are Shane and Mikey, the co-founders of Boostly (https://boostly.com). Boostly is a text marketing and feedback system for restaurants that works seamlessly with their point of sale, online ordering, and phone systems.

Restaurants live or die based on their ability to keep their customers coming back. However, with the rise of the third party delivery platforms, which charge 20%-35% commission on each transaction, restaurants are afraid that many of their customers will stop ordering directly from the restaurant (even if the restaurant can do their own delivery), and wipe out their small profit margins.

The delivery platforms also maintain ownership of the customer data. They know how valuable this is for marketing, whereas the typical restaurant owner is focused on the food and service, as they should be—and they miss out on being able to communicate directly with their guest as a result. With so many restaurants hanging by a thread these days, it’s more important than ever that they be able to market to their customers themselves, build relationships, and get their customers to order through their most profitable channels.

Customer data is notoriously hard for restaurant owners to access because it is scattered across different systems with various challenges. Even if they access it, they don’t have a way to manage opt-in consent for texting. And of course, most restaurant owners are non-technical and so none of this stuff is easy for them to begin with. We help restaurants access their data, get people opted-in to receive text marketing, and then put it all on autopilot.

All of this started when I (Shane) was running sales for Jolt, a restaurant operations software company, and saw the early stages of online ordering trends. Everyone was focused on the transactions, while customer data was largely getting neglected. Our insight was that this was leaving an incredible amount of opportunity on the table—to turn online ordering into a marketing tool for the restaurant, instead of just being an order taker.

Initially, we founded the company as an online ordering system with a few marketing and feedback tools. We thought that the only way for us to access the customer information would be to own the transaction. We sold that online ordering system to StrideQ, and through that experience we learned how to access customer data from the restaurant's point of sale, online ordering, and other systems. We’ve built Boostly's current tools to put that data to work for the restaurant.

Essentially, we work with the restaurant's point of sale, online ordering, and phone systems to ask for opt-in consent for the customer to receive marketing texts. For example, when ordering online, someone could check a box to opt in to receive marketing texts. Or when someone calls the store, one of the prompts that they can select is to “Press 1 to join our text club and get 10% off today’s order.” Once we have the customer’s permission, we put text marketing on autopilot for the restaurant, so that they can send weekly offers, birthday deals, and other reminders to their opted-in subscribers. We then track the usage so that a restaurant knows exactly how much revenue they drove through their text marketing campaigns.

Additionally, we collect feedback on the customer's experience and give an easy option to leave a review or to give internal feedback to the restaurant that the restaurant can use to resolve issues in real time and get the customer to come back and re-order.

I know some of this might sound a bit spammy, by HN’s demanding standards—one key thing we help the restaurants understand is that it’s in their interest not to over-text their customers. We are scrupulously opt-in, focused on asking politely for permission, and making sure that restaurants set the right expectations for how many texts the customers should expect.

Here’s a quick video that shows a bit about how it works: https://youtu.be/nG2iSFCnP7Q

There are a ton of SMS marketing companies out there. Five things differentiate us and make us good for restaurants in particular: (1) Ability to opt-in customers through point of sale, online ordering, and phone systems; (2) Fully automated experience; (3) ROI tracking; (4) Collect feedback on the customer's experience with the ability to resolve issues in real-time; (5) Giving customers an easy way to leave public reviews, without them feeling pressured to do so.

With your typical text marketing system, the only way to join is to text a keyword to a phone number. Also there is no automation, so as a restaurant owner, I have to go in and schedule every text that I want to go out. With Boostly, since we work with the restaurant's existing systems, we can facilitate opt-ins in real-time without customers having to text a keyword—for example we can ask them “Do you want to join our text club and receive offers from us” at the time that they order food. Also, it's completely automated (they can set up 6+ offers and it automatically rotates through those offers each week). Additionally, we collect feedback, encourage reviews on Google, and are able to track exactly how much revenue was generated through those offers (most texting services can’t do this).

As far as reviews go, we give everyone the opportunity to leave a review, including if they have a negative experience. What we do is also give the ability to send internal feedback to the restaurant, and then make it easy for the restaurant to respond and hopefully resolve the issue. This is good for both the customer and the restaurant, and we think it’s a much nicer solution than trying to just pump positive reviews or suppress negative ones. Most restaurants want to know when something isn’t right, and they especially want to be able to fix the problem so that they can keep you as a repeat customer. The review platforms make it hard to initiate a direct conversation with the customer (especially if you’re not eating in the restaurant (i.e. takeout or delivery), so in the end, nobody wins.

Our pricing model is simple: we have a pay-for-what-you-use approach. Restaurants pay $0.08 / SMS and an additional $0.04 / MMS (includes a picture and/or more than 160 characters). We want to earn the restaurant's business every month, so there aren't contracts, unless the restaurant decides to commit to specific monthly texting volumes in exchange for a discount. We have over 400 restaurants using our system so far.

Running an independent restaurant is getting harder and harder as non-technical proprietors are getting squeezed by Big Delivery, inflation, and staff shortages. We think that helping them build better direct relationships with their customers, and getting that relationship right for both sides, is one thing that can really help here.

We’d love to hear your feedback as well as to hear about any experiences that you’ve personally had with text marketing that you wish had been different. Many of us have been on the receiving end of poorly executed SMS marketing campaigns, and we are sure that we can learn from your experiences to continue to help restaurants do it right for their customers! And if any of you have experience in the restaurant business, we’d also love to hear about your thoughts or experiences from that side. Looking forward to the comments!