Squarespace acquires Tock for $400m to push into restaurant booking

1 Apr 2021

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The website building company, recently valued at $10bn, has acquired the Chicago-based restaurant software start-up.

Fresh off a large funding round and filing to go public, Squarespace has acquired restaurant booking start-up Tock for more than $400m in cash and stock.

Squarespace, now valued at $10bn, provides a platform for building websites and e-commerce functions. This acquisition represents a deeper push for the company into servicing restaurant businesses.

Chicago-based Tock develops software for the hospitality industry to manage reservations, takeaways and events, along with customer relationship management features. Squarespace will integrate Tock’s capabilities with its own website building offerings to create an all-in-one solution for hospitality businesses.

“E-commerce within the restaurant and hospitality industries is a large and growing market opportunity,” Anthony Casalena, chief executive of Squarespace, said.

“I’ve long admired Tock’s vision to reimagine how reservation-based businesses connect with their customers. We believe that together we will continue building on their success, bringing Tock’s capabilities to our all-in-one product suite in service of our customers in the hospitality industry and beyond.”

Nick Kokonas, chief executive of Tock, will continue to oversee the business following this deal.“Combining Tock’s unified platform and years of hospitality industry expertise with Squarespace’s reach, resources and design-forward products, in our view, creates an opportunity to deliver a best-in-class solution to millions of entrepreneurs and small businesses around the world,” Kokonas said.

Tock had raised more than $27m from investors since 2014 and has 7,000 restaurant and hospitality businesses on its platform. Since the onset of the pandemic, the company has invested heavily in its Tock to Go service for takeaway scheduling.

Squarespace recently secured a bumper $300m funding round that valued the company at $10bn, with Tiger Global Management, D1 Capital Partners and Accel all pumping money in again. The company is headquartered in New York and also has an office in Dublin.

Next up the company is planning to go public. It privately filed its paperwork earlier this year and has yet to disclose its financials but is reportedly profitable.

The Tock deal is its third acquisition after it bought appointment scheduling start-up Acuity Scheduling and social media design company Unfold in 2019.

Jonathan Keane is a freelance business and technology journalist based in Dublin

editorial@siliconrepublic.com