Waitr will be rebranded as ASAP and has also entered into an agreement to acquire a software company serving cannabis dispensary retailers in North America.
The Lafayette-based company made the two announcements Friday, ending months of speculation after first going public with its plan for a name change in June. It acquired the domain ASAP.com and reserved the NASDAQ trading symbol ASAP.
The rebranding comes after the company agreed to pay $4.7 million to a similar business in California, named waiter.com and trademarked in 2000, over trademark issues and agreed to adopt a new trademark by June 22, 2022.
ASAP, company officials said, will serve as the foundation of its brand moving forward “as we believe it better embodies the future direction of our company.”
The company signed a letter of intent to acquire Retail Innovation Labs Inc., also known as Cova, the leading point of sale, inventory and compliance software business for $90 million, which will be paid in with cash and share of common stock, company officials said.
Waitr announced in March it was teaming up with Flow Payments to create a specialized platform for the sale and delivery of legal marijuana in a partnership that would use Waitr’s proprietary delivery technology along with Flow’s payment processing capabilities to create a platform that abides by federal and state laws.
It completed the asset acquisitions of Flow and two other payment processing companies, ProMerchant and Cape Cod Merchant Services, in August. The three are key players in the merchant processing solutions space, officials said.
Total value of cannabis transactions processed on Cova are estimated to be $2.3 billion, said Carl Grimstad, Waitr CEO and board chair. Cova’s system could be adapted for restaurant use for in-house and food delivery services.
“We believe that the Cova POS solution will be symbiotic with our recently acquired Cape (Cod Merchant Services) payments business,” Grimstad said. “Cova’s software solution will provide an opportunity to offer these retailers regulatory compliant payment solutions and, when and if provincial regulations in Canada and federal and state regulations in the United States evolve, potentially the ability to offer delivery services as well.”
Cova specializes in cannabis retail transactions, addressing the seed-to-sale system requirements and legal compliance. The company, with headquarters in Denver and Vancouver, powers about 2,080 stores.
“Combining our industry leading retail cannabis technology with Waitr’s on demand delivery logistics network and expertise in payments are a perfect match,” Cova CEO Gary Cohen said. “Waitr and Cova share the same values. We both put the retailer first and believe that nobody should get between them and their customers.”
