Completed Seed Round in November 2018 for $1.3M
19 employees
Over 10,000 users
250 Businesses
Expanded to San Diego in January 2019
Found product market fit with an average month over month revenue increase of 137%
Qwick connects hospitality professionals with food and beverage shifts in real-time. The platform helps companies find high-quality, reliable, and highly-rated workers based on industry experience.
Jamie, a human resource technology veteran with over 25 years of experience in the industry, who later shifted his focus to the hospitality industry. Jamie has deep industry expertise in the human capital management space and brought that wisdom to Coplex in the fall of 2017 with the idea to create Qwick, an on-demand workforce for the hospitality industry.
Chris, a seasoned executive and entrepreneur with over 15 years of experience leading and advising companies joined forces with Jamie to co-found Qwick. As an owner of 1,400+ Room Hilton, Marriott + IHG branded portfolio, recognized the issues with staffing that hotel and restaurant owners commonly faced. Together, they wanted to find a solution to order staff for businesses the same way one could order an uber.
Food and beverage professionals desire the freedom that the ‘gig economy’ offers, but hourly jobs are usually capped at 30 hours per week. Because of this, many professionals have to juggle many schedules and work multiple jobs to cover their cost of living since they are typically not paid appropriately for their skillset.
F&B businesses suffer from high turnover, unreliable staff, and unpredictable amounts of banquets and events. Hiring, especially with temp agencies, can be expensive due to fluctuations in business costs.
Provide a better experience in finding food and beverage workers for hospitality companies such as hotels hosting banquets and events, catering companies, event organizers, and restaurants. The benefits include:
• Speed (on-demand)
• Quality
• Reliability
• Service
• Transparency
Workers provide their work experience and availability, and businesses post shifts that need to be filled. Qwick texts workers available shifts that fit their skills and schedule. If interested, workers can pick up any shift offered to them. The benefits of using Qwick for workers include:
• Freedom
• Flexibility
• Service
• Same-day-pay
Qwick partnered with our team of startup builders to bring their idea to life. Together, our team consisted of:
The Qwick team met up with Coplex in December of 2017 for a 2-day lean canvas workshop. Together, we workshopped the original idea of Qwick: an on-demand service for hotels to find contracted housekeepers. However, through the course of our 9-month program, the business model shifted.
The decision to pivot the business from the original housekeeper contracting model came from the discovery that there was not enough supply to meet the demand needed, and there were multiple accounts of unreliable and inconsistent scheduling and logistical conflicts, making the business difficult to grow and keep up with demand. We learned that this model was no longer sustainable, resulting in the pivot to food and beverage in hospitality since there was no additional training necessary. Serving drinks and food is the same across all hotels and events, making the model easy to navigate and grow.
Demand Side: We acquired Qwick’s first users utilizing a direct sales approach and by delivering gift boxes with an exclusive invite to an Arizona Diamondbacks baseball suite to watch a game with Jamie Baxter. We were involved in an ongoing experience since it was a B2B model on a longer sales cycle. This incrementally generated relationships and a rapport with potential clients.
Supply Side: We leveraged Craigslist and Facebook ads to register new users and build a strong database. Hundreds of leads were generated. Once potential professionals sign-up, they need to show up and pass orientation to be added to the platform.
Coplex created Qwick’s logo, website, and platform. In addition, we helped to position their brand voice and content, create marketing handouts, and assist with fundraising materials such as investor decks and introductions.
In November 2018, Qwick began its Seed Round. In just over a month, Qwick was oversubscribed and closed its round at $1.3M. Roughly 80% of Qwick’s investment contacts came directly from the Coplex Ecosystem.
Working with Coplex was amazing and has been a critical part of our success to-date. We evaluated many options for how to best start Qwick but ultimately chose the Coplex program because it would help us build out the entire company- not just the technology. I would highly recommend Coplex to anyone that has industry expertise and is looking to start a high-growth tech company. Coplex successfully helped us take our concept to over $50k in monthly revenue and to a seed round in just 9 months.
