Menufy sale scales HungerRush to more than 500 workers, 20,000 restaurants, KC co-founder says

October 27, 2021  |  Channa Steinmetz

Sharmil Desai, Menufy

Growth isn’t new to the menu for Menufy’s Leawood based team, said Sharmil Desai, noting the online platform for restaurants had grown to 140 employees before its freshly announced acquisition by HungerRush.

“I can’t think of any point when Menufy has not been adding and expanding,” Desai, co-founder and CEO of Menufy, told Startland News. “We’ve always been bringing in new hires, so we’ve gotten used to managing a company with a growing team. The team here is used to change.”

Click here to read more about why Menufy sold to HungerRush, a Houston-based cloud software provider for the restaurant industry.

Menufy announced Tuesday that its e-commerce platform for restaurant ordering will be incorporated into the HungerRush 360 cloud point-of-sale (POS) system — which is complementary to solutions already offered by Menufy.

Details of the acquisition deal were not disclosed. The local team is expected to operate under the “Menufy by HungerRush” brand.

“We covered two different parts of the market with HungerRush being more mid-market and us being more SMB [small and midsize business] focused,” Desai explained. “We saw a lot of strengths that would be good for us and for both of the combined businesses.” 

“When you look at the combined businesses, the scale is impressive,” he continued, noting the 20,000 restaurants under the unified company. “The team now has over 500 employees.”

Click here to read more about how Menufy grew its operations with a diverse team built in Kansas City.

Although the company didn’t release specific hiring plans, Kansas City can expect to see more local job openings, Desai said.

“We have some job postings that are still open, and we definitely want to fill them,” he added. “We’re just going to keep growing.”

HungerRush’s headquarters is expected to remain in Houston, but Leawood, Kansas, will be added to the company’s list of offices. Other locations include: India, Austin, New York and Ann Arbor, Michigan. 

As organizational changes lie ahead for the company, Desai said, the Menufy team is ready to dive in while still focusing on its business and customers — old and new.

“We’re really excited about the acquisition,” Desai said. “I think it’s going to be great for our employees; I think it’s going to be great for our customers; and I think it’s going to be great for Kansas City.”

This story is possible thanks to support from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, a private, nonpartisan foundation that works together with communities in education and entrepreneurship to create uncommon solutions and empower people to shape their futures and be successful.

For more information, visit www.kauffman.org and connect at www.twitter.com/kauffmanfdn and www.facebook.com/kauffmanfdn

startland-tip-jar

TIP JAR

Did you enjoy this post? Show your support by becoming a member or buying us a coffee.

Tagged , ,
Featured Business
    Featured Founder

      2021 Startups to Watch

        stats here

        Related Posts on Startland News

        Carolyne Gakuria, ScheduleMe

        Tired of waiting at the barber shop? An AI-infused platform grown at UMKC could trim time

        By Tommy Felts | May 28, 2019

        Born in the barber’s chair, Kansas City-based ScheduleMe could take more than a little off the top for service-based retailers. The startup plans to use artificial intelligence to groom the haphazard scheduling process entirely, its co-founders said. “We discovered that [our barbershop] was having issues with scheduling. What we wanted to do was try to…

        Peter, Audrey and Donna Yadrich, 2010

        AudreySpirit fashions clothing to help chronically ill child patients feel like themselves again

        By Tommy Felts | May 28, 2019

        AudreySpirit is designed to bring dignity to chronically sick children, said Donna Yadrich, detailing a specially created clothing line that doesn’t sacrifice practicality. “When my daughter Audrey was in the [Intensive Care Unit] the last time, I was looking at her arms and she just had so many wires and everything coming out of her…

        KCultivator Q&A: Chad Feather ventured to China and back, stayed for KC kindness, community

        By Tommy Felts | May 24, 2019

        Editor’s note: KCultivators is a lighthearted profile series to highlight people who are meaningfully enriching Kansas City’s entrepreneurial ecosystem. The KCultivator Series is sponsored by Plexpod, a progressive coworking platform offering next generation workspace for entrepreneurs, startups, and growth-stage companies of all sizes. Age doesn’t define entrepreneurial talent and Chad Feather is proof, he said…

        Andrea Savage, Salem Habte, Mark Babcock, Alec Rodgers, and Ali Brandolino, UMKC Enactus

        UMKC Enactus team kicks open front door to Kansas City innovation scene with final four win

        By Tommy Felts | May 24, 2019

        As the number of teams left standing in the Enactus U.S. nationals started to dwindle, members of the competitive entrepreneurial development program’s team at the University of Missouri-Kansas City rode a pulsating wave of excitement and emotion, recalled Ali Brandolino. “I started crying,” added Brandolino, UMKC Enactus vice president of operations. “It was the most…