Science On Call

Science On Call is a Chicago-based provider of technology support for restaurants. It operates a human-powered, tech-enabled help desk that restaurant staff, managers and headquarters personnel can reach by text, WhatsApp, phone or email without logging into an app or portal. The service covers the platforms restaurants use day to day, including point-of-sale, kitchen display systems, loyalty, scheduling, online ordering, training tools, email, phone systems, internet and Wi-Fi.

The company sells monthly subscriptions per location. A basic tier starting at $79 per month per location provides 24/7/365 first-line support such as 86'ing menu items, scheduled and unscheduled hours changes, password resets, employee onboarding and offboarding, and SOP/employee manual maintenance, with warm hand-offs on escalation. A higher tier starting at $379 per month per location adds full hardware and software troubleshooting across the customer's tech stack and equipment plus escalation directly to the customer's vendors; enterprise pricing is offered above 20 units. Additional add-on products include a backup internet service from $49 per month per location that supplies monitoring hardware and automatic failover to a secure 4G LTE connection, a guest Wi-Fi product from $39 per month per location that turns Ubiquiti UniFi, Cisco Meraki, TP-Link Omada, Juniper Mist and Cambium cnMaestro access points into branded email-capture landing pages integrated with Mailchimp, HubSpot and Klaviyo, and a menu-management service from $59 per month per location staffed by a dedicated "menu scientist" for menu edits and launches.

Alongside its human agents, the company applies AI and robotic process automation built on a proprietary database of technology resolutions gathered from working with hundreds of restaurants, and can incorporate a customer's own standards of practice and training materials. Automations handle common requests such as removing items from menus, pausing online ordering and changing store hours across integrated platforms, and the platform is multilingual.

Founding story

Co-founders Andy Freivogel and Luisa Castellanos began working together in 2014 on a tech support company focused on brick-and-mortar retail, and observed that no one was addressing the complex technology stacks of restaurants, an industry with thin margins and high turnover. Science On Call has been helping restaurants with technology challenges since 2020. Freivogel entered hospitality as a fry cook, worked in specialty coffee, helped build a residential ISP and served as Director of IT for Intelligentsia Coffee. Castellanos has more than 10 years in marketing, retail and customer experience and started her first business at age 11. Third co-founder and CTO Ken Tsang brings over 20 years in technology, marketing and operations management, most recently as head of IT and marketing for a specialty grocery and restaurant group.

Business model

Recurring monthly subscription per restaurant location, tiered by scope of support, with optional add-on subscriptions for backup internet, guest Wi-Fi and menu management. Enterprise pricing is available for operators with 20 or more units.

Flat-rate monthly subscription fees per location: support packages starting at $79 and $379 per month per location, backup internet from $49, guest Wi-Fi from $39 and menu management from $59 per month per location. Backup internet pricing bundles hardware rental, data usage and monitoring.

Traction

More than 1,000 restaurants nationwide are described on the company's site as depending on the service; an April 2025 podcast episode cites about 900 restaurant locations across the US, approximately $2 million in ARR for the year, roughly 70% gross margins with a target of about 85% by the end of the following year, and about $1.3 million in new revenue closed in the prior year.

Latest developments

In April 2025 co-founder and COO Luisa Castellanos pitched the company on The Pitch podcast, stating it was raising a $2 million velocity round to fund go-to-market expansion and further automation of restaurant support tasks.