Although you may know Squarespace for its website building services (or podcast ads), it looks like the company is venturing into the hospitality industry with its latest acquisition.
On Wednesday, Squarespace announced that it acquired Chicago-based Tock in a $400 million cash and stock deal.
Tock has created a platform that handles online reservations, table management, takeout and events for restaurants, wineries and other hospitality businesses. Launched in 2014 by Nick Kokonas of the Alinea Group, Tock now serves over 7,000 hospitality operators as customers.
Tock’s most recent funding round happened in May of 2020, when the company raised $10 million in an over-subscribed round. This acquisition marks a major achievement for the Chicago company.
“Squarespace and Tock have a shared mission of elevating and enabling our customers’ success and passion,” Tock CEO and founder Nick Kokonas said in a statement. “Combining Tock’s unified platform and years of hospitality industry expertise with Squarespace’s reach, resources and design-forward products, in our view, creates an opportunity to deliver a best-in-class solution to millions of entrepreneurs and small businesses around the world.”
Kokonas will remain in his role as Tock’s CEO.
Squarespace says this acquisition will allow it to expand its product suite, and offer new services to its customers looking to build an online business presence. It also follows the company’s acquisitions of appointment scheduling platform Acuity Scheduling and social media storytelling app Unfold in 2019.
“E-commerce within the restaurant and hospitality industries is a large and growing market opportunity,” Squarespace founder and CEO Anthony Casalena said in a statement. “I’ve long admired Tock’s vision to reimagine how reservation-based businesses connect with their customers. We believe that together we will continue building on their success, bringing Tock’s capabilities to our all-in-one product suite in service of our customers in the hospitality industry and beyond.”
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