Grazzy Raises $4.25M to Power Hospitality’s Future of Digital Tips, Same Day Pay and Financial Wellness for Hourly Workers

As cashless payments become the norm, Grazzy increases retention and improves the guest experience at hotels, salons, bars and restaurants.

AUSTIN, Texas, Jan. 23, 2023 — Grazzy, a next-gen employee payments platform, announces $4.25M in Seed funding from Next Coast Ventures and Tuesday Capital to fuel the rapid expansion and growth of its digital tipping, same-day pay, and better, more inclusive banking capabilities. The completion of the Seed round brings Grazzy’s total Seed funding to $6.8MM.

Grazzy helps hotels, bars, restaurants, salons and more improve employee retention and recruiting by increasing wages, unlocking instant access to same-day earnings, and offering more inclusive financial wellness for hourly employees. By putting employee satisfaction at the center of the experience, Grazzy creates happier employees who stay in their roles longer and provide better guest experiences.

Today, several of the world’s biggest and most beloved hotel brands are leveraging the Grazzy platform to enable digital tipping, same-day pay, and in-the-moment positive feedback for their team members. Grazzy offers these customers digital tipping enablement at no cost and the lowest fees in the market.

This latest infusion of capital will be used to accelerate growth across large hotel brands and operating groups, restaurant groups, and salons looking for modern ways to improve the employee experience, while reducing costs. Additionally, this funding will support the continuation of seamless integrations between the Grazzy platform and the major systems (PMS, HMA, and POS) that most hospitality and service businesses rely on to run their operations.

“The annual cost of voluntary hourly staff turnover for US businesses is over $100B, with most leaving for financial reasons. By addressing the financial wellness of those employees, we can reduce turnover and improve lives,” says Grazzy Founder and CEO Russell Lemmer. “Even as hourly pay rates increase, we know that cash constraints have meant meaningfully less earnings for service industry workers who depend on tips to supplement their hourly wages. We’re on a mission to fix that. Our digital, employee-centric platform helps those folks make more money, use it the same day, and save and spend in better ways.”

“There is a clear need in the market for a digital solution that helps improve the lives of hourly workers in the hospitality industry. Grazzy’s ability to serve the complex needs of the enterprise makes them unique to the landscape. The product and the team’s proven ability to deliver at scale makes Grazzy the most powerful player in the market today,” says Thomas Ball, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Next Coast Ventures.

An extensible platform built to create new earnings and move them instantly for hotels and salons.

The Grazzy platform offers the modern familiarity of a P2P payments experience that guests love, but with the enterprise-level branding, compliance and reporting that’s required to successfully deliver ROI at scale.

• Digital tipping: Guests utilize QR codes to instantly tip staff in less than 10 seconds, with no app required. The guest interface is property-branded and can also be integrated with any existing guest applications. By removing the constraints to tip, Grazzy can increase employee earnings by 20%.
  
  
• Same Day Pay: The flexible platform offers multiple payout options for tips, including Grazzy Direct, which allows staff to access their tips instantly. Same day access to earnings provides a powerful competitive advantage for businesses to both keep and recruit hourly employees.
  
  
• Lowest fees in the Market: Grazzy offers the lowest processing fees in the market, ensuring employees maximize their earnings and businesses minimize costs.
  
  
• Built for operational scale: Businesses can meet tax compliance, and measure effective wage increases, retention improvement, and overall guest satisfaction all on a single screen.

Grazzy provides employees the ability to instantly access their same-day tips from hotels, bars, restaurants, salons and any other service-based businesses

Today’s increasingly cashless economy has made it challenging for many service-based businesses to tip-out employees at the end of their shift, forcing many to defer tip-outs to weekly or bi-weekly paychecks. Grazzy unlocks access to digital tips, paid via customer credit cards, allowing service-based businesses to offer same-day, instant access to tips for their staff.

• Instant Access: The Grazzy platform unlocks cash constrained same-day tip-outs and offers staff access to today’s earnings automatically in 30 mins or less – a benefit 80% of employees say would increase their employer trust and loyalty.
  
  
• More back-office efficiency: By removing the need to cut checks for employees outside of the normal pay cycles, Grazzy improves efficiency for the back-office staff while maintaining higher levels of compliance than cash tip-outs.
  
  
• Reduced risk: Automated fund transfers at the end of a shift, further reduces the risk involved for businesses who don’t want to keep money in a safe to facilitate same-day tip outs to staff.

“Grazzy provided Hotel Abri and the team with an effective and simple implementation to the cashless tip question we had been looking for during the past 2 years of the pandemic aftermath,” said EJ Varela, GM at Hotel Abri Metwest Terra Hospitality, part of HRI Hospitality. “The platform has created a positive impact with our team increasing the engagement and morale, a huge win for the property!  It’s not only increasing their financial earnings daily, but it has organically increased our Revinate Guest service and Cleanliness scores. Grazzy is an exceptional tool and partner for our team members and our guests alike.”

Grazzyhelps hourly employees make more money, access it the same day, and save and spend in better ways. By improving financial wellness for front line workers, Grazzy reduces retention and recruiting costs for hotels, bars, restaurants, and salons. Our extensible payments platform enables digital tipping, instant tip-outs, and inclusive banking solutions that are built to scale with hospitality and services businesses of any size.