BrazilFrench restaurant payments app Sunday raises €20 million
Former Bain consultant Christine de Wendel has teamed up with Victor Lugger and Tigrane Seydoux to launch a payments app, Sunday – launched with seed funding of around €20 million.
With Sunday, customers can scan a QR Code and walk away after their meal – condensing the entire payment process into 10 seconds. “In the meantime restaurants can focus on what matters for them: cooking incredible food and delivering an amazing guest experience,” according to the founders.
Sunday’s mid-April launch was fueled with a €20 million seed funding round led by investment managers Coatue and European seed fund New Wave. The exceptionally high investment can be pegged on the app’s strong proposition, backed with an accomplished set of founders.
Sunday links to a restaurant’s menu and cash register, and hosts myriad payment portals – spanning Oracle Micros, Brinks, Tiller, Zelty, Revo and CashPad. The resultant seamless experience is not just good for speedy payments: it’s good for business in general.
“Turn your tables faster, increase the average basket, increase tips, save bank charges,” said de Wendel, who has a glowing resume. A Georgetown University and London School of Economics graduate in international relations, she started out at management consultancy Bain & Company in Paris.
Three years at Bain saw her move to New York, and the prestigious start laid the base for aglittering professional career. “Having this background in strategy consulting allows me to present in front of investors, to speak in front of an crowd or to give a constructive and detailed feedback. What I learned in consulting is still useful to me every day,” she said to French publication Consultor.
Since leaving Bain, she has managed business development for Starwood Hotels; overseen the Paris launch of ecommerce fashion platform Zalando; and worked as chief operating officer at the Paris office of online DIY equipment platform ManoMano. She now sets off on her own entrepreneurial adventure, joined by Victor Lugger and Tigrane Seydoux – founders of pan-European Italian restaurant chain Big Mamma Group.
Lugger is a former teacher at HEC Paris, where he founded a startup incubator before leaving to start Big mamma in 2013. Seydoux is a former student at HEC, and worked at a private investment firm before joining Lugger in the new venture. The pair now join de Wendel in running Sunday, which plans to hire 80 people for a nationwide deployment by the end of May. The aim is to roll out across thousands of restaurants in France.
The trio have hired another former strategy consultant, Charles Conques, to be their chief operating officer for Europe. Conques has a background at Boston Consulting Group, and spent over six years as a senior executive at Uber in Europe – where he also supervised the launch of e-bike platform Jump.
