Mobile ordering and payments company Mr Yum has acquired leading CRM hospitality and marketing company MyGuestlist.
Both based in Melbourne, MyGuestlist’s full time staff will shift to Mr Yum’s Collingwood headquarters to create a global team of more than 260 employees, who will continue building innovative tools for hospitality and entertainment venues. MyGuestlist’s subsidiary CRM platform Sprout is included in the acquisition.
At the start of 2021, Mr Yum employed just 15 people but the business grew exponentially with the COVID lockdowns, offering on-premise businesses QR Codes to facilitate ordering and maintain social distancing protocols.
Mr Yum CEO and Co-founder Kim Teo [pictured above centre with MyGuestlist Founders Damian Janeski (left) and Andy Marcus] says the acquisition will accelerate the company’s mission of connecting venues with their guests in valuable and differentiated ways.
“This deal is an evolution of a successful partnership between our two companies, with MyGuestlist integrated with Mr Yum in hundreds of shared locations, including Australian Venue Co’s sites,” she says.
“We’re thrilled to welcome MyGuestlist into the Mr Yum family. They’ve built a world-class team and technology solution and we’re excited to pour fuel on the fire and dream big with the innovation that’s possible by combining our two offerings.”
Ms Teo says consumers are eager to have more personalised dining experiences and the acquisition will accelerate the development of sophisticated new products to enable hospitality operators to deliver bespoke service to their customers.
“Together, we’ll build things that have never been done in hospitality before. Our venue customers are screaming out for innovative ways to create ongoing, meaningful relationships with their guests, like being able to offer unique discounts or to let them know their favourite item is back on the menu,” she says.
“We will make a real difference in the way people experience dining. You’ll walk in the door and the host will know your name, your favourite table to sit at, the pinot noir you enjoy and that you love spicy food.”
MyGuestlist co-founder Andy Marcus says the combination will create a global, best-in-class growth platform for hospitality and entertainment venues.
“Together we’ll be able to rapidly scale solutions to provide venues with deeper and more seamless insights into their customers, which will enable them to provide superior and more meaningful hospitality experiences,” he says.
“Integrating our powerful and intuitive CRM into Mr Yum’s industry-leading platform will create elegant, data-driven one-to-one conversations between venues and their guests for the first time. We are incredibly excited about what the future holds for the company.”
Australian Venue Co. Chief Experience Officer Marianne Mewett says the two companies together will create an even better experience for customers, AVC marketing and in-venue teams across the country.
“Mr Yum is by far the best mobile ordering platform on the market and combining that with MyGuestlist’s smart customer data and marketing automation platform makes this a very powerful combination for venues. We are obsessed with understanding our customers and this is really going to accelerate our goals around personalisation and be a formidable tool for our marketing and venue teams,” she says.
