Grazzy would like to see people stop using “no money” as an excuse to tipping

Although cash was once common, credit cards and digital wallets have made it difficult to keep more than a few dollars in your wallet.

Many of us are not prepared to express gratitude when we travel, especially if we have to tip people for cleaning our rooms or driving our cars around.

Austin-based Grazzy The platform provides instant pay and tax compliance, where employees can get tips on frontline workers. It is a tool that can be used to recruit and retain service-based employers such as bars, restaurants, and salons. Employees also have financial wellness tools.

Russell Lemmer, Grazzy’s founder and CEO, told TechCrunch he was one of those travelers who experiences great services at hotels but uses his phone for everything and rarely carries cash.

“While staying in Las Vegas, I left my bags with the valet, and wanted to tip, but couldn’t,” Lemmer recalls. “I heard the valet tell his colleagues that ‘this is seven in a row.’ I felt ashamed and started to think about a solution.”

Russell Lemmer, founder & CEO of Grazzy Image Credits Grazzy

In surveying others, Lemmer found that he was not alone: A majority of people he talked to were also heavy phone wallet users who were once in a position of not being able to tip because they didn’t have cash.

He started working on Grazzy in September 2021, and what resulted is an app that takes a “business-to-business approach to Venmo,” and a seamless way to show gratitude to someone they don’t know personally, he said.

Lemmer stated that employers should also be able to reduce the hourly turnover of workers. $100 billion problem In the U.S. by offering employees a way to save and earn more. He’s not alone: As the global pandemic exasperated the already tough conditions for frontline workers, other startups brought in technology to solve certain aspects. One example is Anthill Connect people who have never sat at a desk. SnapShift How to manage HR and AskNicely for customer experience.

Here’s how Grazzy works: Guests can instantly tip staff using a property-branded QR code, and the Grazzy Direct feature allows staff to access their tips instantly. Grazzy makes its money through processing fees.

The platform monitors and tracks money to ensure that businesses are tax compliant and also shows wage increases and their effect on employees.

Lemmer claims that Grazzy decreases the time it takes to receive tips through credit card transactions. This also reduces the need for employees to tip out or cut their weekly paychecks. In addition, by offering an alternative to traditional cash, Lemmer sees digital tips increasing an employee’s earnings by 20% on average.

Grazzy worked with its first large customer in July last year. Now, the number of customers is about twelve. Lemmer stated that the company is still in its infancy and has already started to bring in revenue over the past month.

Today, the company announced $4.25million in seed financing led by Next Coast Ventures (and Tuesday Capital). It now has $6.8million in funding.

Lemmer plans to use the capital to accelerate customer growth across additional hotel brands and operating groups as well as salons, and technology development so that Grazzy can integrate with major operating systems.

In the meantime, he has an ambitious three-year plan. It involves pursuing hundreds of hotel operating groups and creating additional financial wellness features to help workers.

“We want to start to layer in better ways to save and spend,” Lemmer said. “We feel that is the next step after helping them make more money and access more of it on the same day. Long-term, they stay in these jobs a little bit longer, and it is a recruiting tool for the employers.”