These days, it feels like every company in the restaurant tech wants to be everything to everybody. In the past few months, middleware companies like ItsaCheckmate, Deliverect, and Chowly have all announced acquisitions of online ordering companies to strengthen their value proposition. The reason for such moves are both offensive and defensive. In a post-pandemic environment, restaurants are becoming acutely aware of the issues caused by point-of-sale (POS) and delivery integrations and are looking to consolidate to fewer vendors. By offering 1p ordering solutions, middleware companies can risk being cannibalized by all-in-one POS and online ordering solutions like Toast while also creating a stronger value proposition for new customers. Now, we’re seeing another set of players including DoorDash, CloudKitchens, and Flipdish all enter the POS space. In February, CloudKitchens’ Otter subsidiary quietly launched a POS product called Mercury while DoorDash has been heads down building Carte POS to penetrate deeper into a restaurant’s four walls. Two weeks ago, online ordering, mobile app, and kiosk startup Flipdish also announced the acquisition of a UK-based POS firm called Jinoby.