Houston-based Roovy Technologies has created a mobile app where people can control their dining experience completely from their phones. Photo via roovy.io

Imagine going into a popular restaurant, sitting down at an open table and controlling the entire dining experience from a smartphone.

That's food, drinks, and even dessert all ordered and paid for on a phone.

Prolific Houston-area restaurateur Ken Bridge had the vision to converge dining with technology by creating a digital solution to combat chronic wait times in restaurants.

That vision became the Roovy Technologies mobile app, a platform designed to create the ultimate convenience for gastronauts everywhere.

"Roovy was birthed out of frustration," says Bridge, the serial entrepreneur behind the Delicious Concepts restaurant group. "Years ago, we would typically have lines out the door, so I thought to myself, that with technology, there should be a way for a guest to come in and manage their experience entirely from their phone.

"I felt like guests could go in, get sat at a table and order their food from their phone and pay from their phone and call it a day. That's how the idea of Roovy was conceived."

Three years ago, after putting mock pages together, Bridge started attending South by Southwest Interactive in Austin for research and inspiration. That led to commissioning a local boutique development agency in Houston to build out Roovy's Minimum Viable Product or road map before creating a fully functional platform.

"Roovy is a platform that allows the user to order and pay entirely from their phone," says Bridge. "We will soon be the first company to have all three categories of this type of app: dine-in, take out and delivery."

Bridge deployed Roovy in his Japanese concept restaurant, Blackbird Izakaya, at 1221 W. 11th St. in the Heights several months ago to test out the app before rolling it out to several other restaurants.

"It's a work in progress like everything else," says Bridge, who hopes for Roovy to be deployed in 20 restaurants very soon, then 40. "Everyday we're going to have issues that we need to resolve. But for now, we'll build it, we'll test it, we'll learn and we'll continue to go back and work out the kinks and keep pushing forward from there."

Convenience — on both sides of the transaction

For users, the value proposition is to be able to order and pay from their phone.

"Even a really good server can be impeding at the same time, over-qualifying or checking too much on a table that it becomes a distraction," says Bridge. "With Roovy, when the user is ready to order they can. It's convenience-based technology."

For operators, it streamlines the entire process, up to and including payment.

"We built this as a native solution, so restaurants can technically operate their entire restaurant on one single iPad, while cutting out all hardware," says Bridge.

The restaurant's menu is fully interactive and constantly updated in the app.

When a user places an order, they can add notes to alert the kitchen or bar with their allergies or substitutions and the kitchen or bar receives the notice on the Kitchen Display Side.

That order is then colored and timed, depending on the restaurant's flow and the user then receives a page when the order is ready.

"When restaurant's not packed, they can prepare orders in four minutes, but when packed, it may take eight minutes," says Bridge. "So through the machine learning, they can input a flow time, but then the system intuitively will become more and more intelligent based on the number of tickets and how frequently the operator is stocking and selling a particular item."

Bridge funded Roovy with his own money, so running the cloud-based platform in his own restaurants provided another distinct advantage for his startup's bottom line. And, with operators running the Roovy platform, it has officially entered post-revenue valuation. Roovy's revenue, like other payments facilitators, comes from its restaurant clients.

With the method of payment tied into the app, users pay from their phone and Roovy processes that payment transaction between the user, operator and bank tied to that payment method for a processing fee, much like a point-of-sale provider would with traditional POS devices.

Increasing opportunities for sales

What separates Roovy from other processors, though, is more than just the disruption of bulky hardware, printers and other equipment that can be very expensive for the operator.

It's the ability to maximize sales through convenience.

Case in point: in a busy restaurant, customers who have finished their meal, but possibly have cravings for another drink or a dessert might choose to eschew the urge based on the availability of their wait staff or the line at the bar.

But with Roovy, they could simply add the additional food item or drink to their cart, and have it at their table in no time.

"A lot of restaurants are not taking advantage of opportunities to maximize their sales," says Bridge. "If the per person average for a particular restaurant is $20, the likelihood that there are customers that want one more beer but don't want to go through the motions of ordering it based on service not being around is high. They're going to just leave and the restaurant just missed out on a potential $6.

"That would have been a 30 percent increase in sales," Bridge continues. "So, because of Roovy's ease of use, restaurants can increase their per person revenue and we guarantee an increase of 19 or 20 percent for operators that use our platform."

An additional revenue stream for Roovy centers on its pinpointed marketing campaigns designed to push promotions to its users based on user data and analytics.

"We can help operators run promotions for our users that can be very specific to the demographic of their choice," says Bridge. "They can be very direct and specific push notifications that go out to users based on location, vicinity or proximity, for example. We could also push notifications to a restaurant's repeat customers."

More features to come

For users that want take out, Roovy will be working with predictive arrival technology to estimate better execution times for orders so that they will be as fresh as possible for customer pickup.

Roovy will also be adding "Roovy Coin," a loyalty and rewards programs, as well as a social component for those users that like to share their experience with their friends.

"Beyond this super unique emerging technology, we are building heavily on the sociability aspects of it," says Bridge. "For example, users will be able to check in with friends, plan potential meetups, share video clips with their friends and the community on the platform and be able to review restaurants.

"I kid about this all the time, but most of us remember two things: the first kiss we had and the first time we used Uber. We'll never forget that. Our goal is to come in with that same kind of impact and convince users and operators that Roovy is not just a great technology, it's the inevitable technology that will be adopted on mass levels."

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7 top Houston researchers join Rice innovation cohort for 2025

top of class

The Liu Idea Lab for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (Lilie) has announced its 2025 Rice Innovation Fellows cohort, which includes students developing cutting-edge thermal management solutions for artificial intelligence, biomaterial cell therapy for treating lymphedema, and other innovative projects.

The program aims to support Rice Ph.D. students and postdocs in turning their research into real-world solutions and startups.

“Our fourth cohort of fellows spans multiple industries addressing the most pressing challenges of humanity,” Kyle Judah, Lilie’s executive director, said in a news release. “We see seven Innovation Fellows and their professors with the passion and a path to change the world.”

The seven 2025 Innovation Fellows are:

Chen-Yang Lin, Materials Science and Nanoengineering, Ph.D. 2025

Professor Jun Lou’s Laboratory

Lin is a co-founder of HEXAspec, a startup that focuses on creating thermal management solutions for artificial intelligence chips and high-performance semiconductor devices. The startup won the prestigious H. Albert Napier Rice Launch Challenge (NRLC) competition last year and also won this year's Energy Venture Day and Pitch Competition during CERAWeek in the TEX-E student track.

Sarah Jimenez, Bioengineering, Ph.D. 2027

Professor Camila Hochman-Mendez Laboratory

Jimenez is working to make transplantable hearts out of decellularized animal heart scaffolds in the lab and the creating an automated cell delivery system to “re-cellularize” hearts with patient-derived stem cells.

Alexander Lathem, Applied Physics and Chemistry, Ph.D. 2026

Professor James M. Tour Laboratory

Lathem’s research is focused on bringing laser-induced graphene technology from “academia into industry,” according to the university.

Dilrasbonu Vohidova is a Bioengineering, Ph.D. 2027

Professor Omid Veiseh Laboratory

Vohidova’s research focuses on engineering therapeutic cells to secrete immunomodulators, aiming to prevent the onset of autoimmunity in Type 1 diabetes.

Alexandria Carter, Bioengineering, Ph.D. 2027

Professor Michael King Laboratory

Carter is developing a device that offers personalized patient disease diagnostics by using 3D culturing and superhydrophobicity.

Alvaro Moreno Lozano, Bioengineering, Ph.D. 2027

Professor Omid Veiseh Lab

Lozano is using novel biomaterials and cell engineering to develop new technologies for patients with Type 1 Diabetes. The work aims to fabricate a bioartificial pancreas that can control blood glucose levels.

Lucas Eddy, Applied Physics and Chemistry, Ph.D. 2025

Professor James M. Tour Laboratory

Eddy specializes in building and using electrothermal reaction systems for nanomaterial synthesis, waste material upcycling and per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) destruction.

This year, the Liu Lab also introduced its first cohort of five commercialization fellows. See the full list here.

The Rice Innovation Fellows program assists doctoral students and postdoctoral researchers with training and support to turn their ideas into ventures. Alumni have raised over $20 million in funding and grants, according to Lilie. Last year's group included 10 doctoral and postdoctoral students working in fields such as computer science, mechanical engineering and materials science.

“The Innovation Fellows program helps scientist-led startups accelerate growth by leveraging campus resources — from One Small Step grants to the Summer Venture Studio accelerator — before launching into hubs like Greentown Labs, Helix Park and Rice’s new Nexus at The Ion,” Yael Hochberg, head of the Rice Entrepreneurship Initiative and the Ralph S. O’Connor Professor in Entrepreneurship, said in the release. “These ventures are shaping Houston’s next generation of pillar companies, keeping our city, state and country at the forefront of innovation in mission critical industries.”

Houston startup Collide secures $5M to grow energy-focused AI platform

Fresh Funds

Houston-based Collide, a provider of generative artificial intelligence for the energy sector, has raised $5 million in seed funding led by Houston’s Mercury Fund.

Other investors in the seed round include Bryan Sheffield, founder of Austin-based Parsley Energy, which was acquired by Dallas-based Pioneer Natural Resources in 2021; Billy Quinn, founder and managing partner of Dallas-based private equity firm Pearl Energy Investments; and David Albin, co-founder and former managing partner of Dallas-based private equity firm NGP Capital Partners.

“(Collide) co-founders Collin McLelland and Chuck Yates bring a unique understanding of the oil and gas industry,” Blair Garrou, managing partner at Mercury, said in a news release. “Their backgrounds, combined with Collide’s proprietary knowledge base, create a significant and strategic moat for the platform.”

Collide, founded in 2022, says the funding will enable the company to accelerate the development of its GenAI platform. GenAI creates digital content such as images, videos, text, and music.

Originally launched by Houston media organization Digital Wildcatters as “a professional network and digital community for technical discussions and knowledge sharing,” the company says it will now shift its focus to rolling out its enterprise-level, AI-enabled solution.

Collide explains that its platform gathers and synthesizes data from trusted sources to deliver industry insights for oil and gas professionals. Unlike platforms such as OpenAI, Perplexity, and Microsoft Copilot, Collide’s platform “uniquely accesses a comprehensive, industry-specific knowledge base, including technical papers, internal processes, and a curated Q&A database tailored to energy professionals,” the company said.

Collide says its approximately 6,000 platform users span 122 countries.

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This story originally appeared on our sister site, EnergyCapitalHTX.com.

Houston femtech co. debuts first holistic wellness suite following rebrand

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Houston-based femtech company Work&, previously Work&Mother, debuted new lactation suites and its first employee wellness space at MetroNational’s Memorial City Plazas this month.

The 1,457-square-foot Work& space features three lactation rooms and five wellness suites, the latter of which are intended to offer employees a private space and time for telehealth appointments, meditation, prayer, and other needs. The hybrid space, designed by Houston-based Inventure, represents Work&'s shift to offer an array of holistic health and wellness solutions to landlords for tenants.

Work& rebranded from Work&Mother earlier this year. The company was previously focused on outfitting commercial buildings with lactation accommodations for working parents, equipped with a hospital-grade pump, milk storage bags, sanitizing wipes, and other supplies. While Work& will still offer these services through its Work&Mother branch, the addition of its Work&Wellbeing arm allows the company to also "address the broader wellness needs of all employees," according to an announcement made on LinkedIn.

"We are thrilled to bring Work&Mother and Work&Wellbeing to The Plazas," Jules Lairson, co-founder and COO of Work&, said in a news release. “This partnership brings every stakeholder together – employees, employers and landlords all benefit from this kind of forward-thinking tenant experience. We are excited to launch our Work&Wellbeing concept with MetroNational to ensure that all employees have their wellness needs met with private, clean, quiet spaces for use during the workday.”

The new space is available to all tenants across Memorial City Plazas, comprised of three office towers totaling 1 million square feet of Class A office space. In addition to the lactation and wellness suites, the space also features custom banquettes, private lounge seating and phone booths.

“As a family-owned and operated company, MetroNational is deeply committed to fostering a workplace that supports both productivity and the well-being of all our tenants,” Anne Marie Ratliff, vice president of asset management for MetroNational, added in the release. “Partnering with Work& reinforces this commitment, enhancing our workplace experience and setting a new standard for tenant amenities.”

Work& has five Houston locations and several others in major metros, including New York, Austin, D.C., Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, and Miami. According to its website, the company will also introduce a Work&Wellbeing suite in New York.

Abbey Donnell spoke with InnovationMap on the Houston Innovators Podcast about why she founded the company and its plans for growth in 2021. Click here to learn more.