Menufy sale scales HungerRush to more than 500 workers, 20,000 restaurants, KC co-founder says
October 27, 2021 | Channa Steinmetz
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

2021 Startups to Watch
stats here
Related Posts on Startland News
Can KC build the next billion-dollar company? ‘We have the internet here too’
Ambitious startups need to believe they can become Kansas City’s next billion-dollar company, said John Thomson, urging confidence — and the ability to roll with the punches — in the face of risk. “Accomplished entrepreneurs who I’ve met … they just did it. Of course it was risky, and it might fail, but they went and…
KC’s MixTape Monkey curates 11 million users through hip hop streaming service
Taking a long sigh, an underground mixtape mogul logs off from a live Q&A session with customers. Inside his two-bedroom downtown Kansas City apartment, Mark Serrano stares out a window overlooking the corner of 12th and Walnut streets. “Online I have this huge community, itʼs overwhelming,” said Serrano, referencing his staggering global user base of…
New home for Back2KC: Kansas City Startup Foundation expands talent pipeline efforts
It’s the Kansas City Startup Foundation’s turn to drive the tour bus, said Darcy Howe, announcing Monday the transfer of the Back2KC talent pipeline initiative to KCSF, the nonprofit ecosystem-building organization that also powers Startland News. The move means KCSF will take ownership of the program for its Oct. 3-4 return, adding a full-time team…
UMKC-powered tech could help visually-impaired Kansas Citians see via artificial intelligence
Gharib Gharibi is driven to succeed by a desire to pay it forward, he said, riding a high from his startup’s first-place, $20,000 win at UMKC’s Regnier Institute Venture Creation Challenge. “They helped us transform our technology from the computer lab to the real world,” Gharibi, founder of DeepLens and a UMKC PhD student, said…


