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Upserve (formerly, Swipely) is an SaaS technology company that produces restaurant management and analytics software. The software's tools allow restaurateurs to examine data like customer trends, online reviews, reservations, forecasts of the number of guests, and other factors related to restaurant management. As of 2016, Upserve is used in thousands of restaurants in the United States and is responsible for managing 11 million meals per month. The company is based in Providence, Rhode Island.

2009–2012: Early years as social network and loyalty platform
Upserve was founded as Swipely in 2009 by Angus Davis. Davis had previously been a founding executive at Tellme Networks, which was sold to Microsoft in 2007 for nearly $1 billion. The company originally operated as an online social shopping platform similar in style to Blippy. Members of the social network could share purchases with their friends or the internet at large. The service was launched on May 10, 2010 at which point the company announced series A funding in the amount of $7.5 million. The funding round was led by Index Ventures with additional support from Greylock Partners, First Round Capital, Ron Conway, and Chris Sacca. As a part of the deal, Danny Rimer of Index Ventures and Reid Hoffman joined Upserve's board of directors, the latter as an observer.

In February 2011, the company evolved into a loyalty platform for local merchants to reward repeat customers. The service launched in Rhode Island on February 28, 2011 and the company had signed on about 75 merchants to participate in the program. In December 2011, Upserve expanded the loyalty program to Boston where it added an additional 150 merchants. In 2012, Upserve added an analytics component (dubbed "Main Street Marketing Manager") to the platform that allowed merchants to identify loyal and lapsed customers and offer them deals, targeted messages, and "Thank You" notes based on their buying habits. At that time, the company had partnered with 350 merchants in Boston, San Francisco, and New York City.

2012–2015: Shift to payment processing and data analytics
In December 2012, the company announced a "Winter 2013" update that again shifted the company's business model, transforming into a service that processed card payments and offered data analytics and marketing tools. The update added new features such as a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool to keep track of customers, Swipely Heat Map to monitor a merchant’s hourly sales performance, a partnership with American Express that provided next-day funding on American Express transactions, and cloud-based storage of transaction data. The Winter 2013 upgrade also tied into social media, and illustrated to merchants how weather, Facebook posts, and other factors impact their customers' buying patterns. By the end of 2012, the company was processing $250 million in payments per year.

In May 2013, the company raised an additional $12 million in a series B round of funding. Shasta Ventures led the round with existing investors—First Round Capital, Greylock Partners, and Index Ventures—providing additional funding. At that time, the company had partnered with merchants in 130 different cities, was processing around $750 million in payments annually, and had registered around 2 million customers. Later that year, Upserve would eclipse $1 billion in payments per year. In May 2014, the company raised $20 million in funding in a series C round led by the Pritzker Group with additional backing from previous investors, Shasta Ventures and First Round Capital. Upserve also announced that it was processing $2 billion in payments annually and had added support for multi-location businesses. By the end of that year, the company was processing around $4 billion in payments.

2015–present: Official Upserve rebranding
In 2015, Upserve underwent a brief period of layoffs in which members of the company's sales department were let go. By the end of 2015, however, the company was looking to hire more employees for their marketing department. At that point, the company had 92 employees, an increase of 65 compared to 2013. Upserve was also approaching $6 billion in total annual payments.

In March 2016, the company officially rebranded itself from Swipely to Upserve. The name change reflected the company's new focus on restaurants and restaurateurs. At the time of the announcement, Upserve managed over $7 billion in payments annually in thousands of restaurants in all 50 states across the U.S. Additionally, the company managed around 11 million meals per month. Upserve's spring software suite includes the company's first iOS mobile app that allows restaurant managers to view and monitor real-time data analytics on their mobile device.

Products and services
Upserve's flagship product is an SaaS restaurant-management platform that combines analytics and customer relationship management (CRM). Restaurateurs can use the platform to track and predict information like individual buying habits, online reviews, overall dish popularity, the effect weather has on turnout, estimates of the number of diners, and other data related to restaurant management. It can also be used for CRM purposes like table management, cataloging a guest's favorite drink or entree, and analyzing staff performance. Features on the newest Upserve software suite include:


 * Upserve Shift Prep—a machine learning algorithm that predicts how many diners the restaurant can expect on a given night based on several external factors.


 * Upserve Mobile—an iOS mobile app that allows managers to monitor restaurant performance on their mobile device.


 * Upserve Server Performance—a feature that analyzes the performance of the front-of-house staff by turn time, guest retention, and the number of discounts or voids used.


 * Upserve Menu Intelligence—artificial intelligence that analyzes online reviews to see which products perform the best.


 * Upserve Guest Book—a catalog of the 16 million Upserve users and their buying habits across locations.


 * Upserve Sales—an analysis of key restaurant sales across locations and the trends that may appear.


 * Upserve Loyalty—a loyalty program that allows guests to earn rewards without having to change their habits at the point of sale.