Solution

Lula is the eCommerce backbone for retailers, integrating their existing legacy systems into our intelligent hub. This connection instantly enables stores to sell through popular marketplaces (Uber Eats, DoorDash), branded direct-ordering channels (apps, web), and more. While retailers like 7-Eleven and Casey’s spent over 10 years building multimillion-dollar omnichannel operations, Lula empowers leading brands such as Jacksons Food Stores and Circle K to achieve comparable results in mere days—without additional headcount or operational complexity.

Product / service

Lula Hub (live): Digitizes inventory and connects to 23+ marketplaces with unified reporting.

Lula AI Operators (live): Autonomous agents that automate syncing, refund processing, and more, saving staff time.

Lula Direct (live): Web/app ordering (Q2’25) for higher-margin direct sales and loyalty.

Lula Voice (in R&D): Voice-activated ordering & support.

Lula Scan & Go (POC): Future self-checkout for in-store mobile payments.

Projected impact

Lula Commerce directly advances four UN Sustainable Development Goals:

• SDG 8 – Decent Work & Economic Growth: By giving independent convenience stores, gas stations, and pharmacies a turnkey digital-commerce channel, we lift margins on core SKUs by 5-10pp and unlock incremental delivery revenue—preserving thousands of Main-Street jobs and enabling owners (often immigrant or family-run) to reinvest in wages, training, and local hiring.

• SDG 9 – Industry, Innovation & Infrastructure: Our cloud-based “operating system for Everyday Retail” modernizes a fragmented sector that still runs on fax machines and paper price books. Lula integrates legacy POS hardware with AI-driven inventory, ordering, and last-mile logistics, creating a digitally connected micro-infrastructure that small businesses could never build alone.

• SDG 10 – Reduced Inequalities: E-commerce tools are typically priced and architected for large chains; Lula levels the playing field. We subsidize hardware, offer usage-based pricing, and deploy multilingual AI agents so under-resourced merchants—in both rural food deserts and dense urban corridors—can compete on equal footing with big-box retailers.

• SDG 11 – Sustainable Cities & Communities: Hyper-local fulfillment from neighborhood stores shrinks “delivery miles” versus centralized warehouses, cutting CO₂ per order while keeping sales tax and spending within the community. By helping stores stay viable, we maintain walkable, service-rich neighborhoods and prevent the blight that follows small-business closures.

Together, these impacts compound: stronger stores mean stronger streets, fairer access to essential goods, and a resilient local economy that can thrive in a digital-first future.

Theory of change

Theory of Change

Root problem
Independent convenience stores, gas stations, and pharmacies—often immigrant- and family-owned—operate on razor-thin margins and legacy tools. When consumer demand shifts to app-based, rapid delivery, these businesses lack the digital infrastructure to compete, resulting in closures, job loss, and declining neighborhood vitality.

Inputs & activities
Lula invests capital, cloud infrastructure, and AI talent to build an “operating system for Everyday Retail.” We (1) integrate with legacy POS systems, (2) activate omnichannel ordering and last-mile delivery, and (3) layer on AI agents that automate pricing, promotions, and customer support. We also provide micro-loans for hardware and multilingual onboarding to lower adoption barriers.

Outputs
Within 60 days of onboarding, a store gains:

• Live listings across 3+ delivery marketplaces and its own white-label site

• Real-time inventory sync covering >90 % of SKUs

• Automated marketing campaigns and AI customer chat

Short-term outcomes (6–12 months)

• 20–40 % lift in topline sales and 5–10 pp improvement in gross margin per SKU

• Retention of existing staff plus incremental hiring for order pick/pack

• Digital literacy gains for owners and employees

Long-term impact (3–5 years)

• Resilient Main-Street economies that keep local tax dollars circulating (SDG 8)

• A decentralized, tech-enabled retail infrastructure that reduces delivery miles and emissions (SDG 9 & 11)

• A level playing field where small, diverse retailers capture fair market share of e-commerce spend (SDG 10)

By turning underserved shops into profitable digital hubs, Lula helps communities thrive while advancing equitable growth and sustainable urban ecosystems.

Traction

• Explosive store growth
  • Expanded from 300 to 1,650 stores in 14 months—a 5.5× increase—now live in 35+ U.S. states and adding ~120 new locations every month.
  • Signed multi-unit pilots with Circle K, Jacksons Food Stores, and Hunt Brothers Pizza franchisees, putting another 3,200+ stores in the near-term pipeline.

• Rapid GMV and revenue acceleration
  • Platform-driven sales surged from $3 M to $20 M GMV in the last six months. 
  • $1.7 M ARR today, up 4x year-over-year, with 172 locations on a revenue-share model generating an average 4.14 % take rate.

• Deep customer stickiness & wallet expansion
  • Net Revenue Retention >115 % and logo retention >97 % across all cohorts.
  • 65 % of live stores use at least two Lula modules; 30 % use three or more, driving a 42 % ARPU lift within the first nine months of adoption.

• Operational efficiency & AI leverage
  • Automated onboarding cut time-to-launch from 15 days to 3; digital order error rate fell below 0.3 %.
  • AI “Lula Operators” now resolve 80% of support tickets autonomously and have trimmed average ticket resolution time by 68%.

• Tangible store-level impact
  • Partner stores see a 20-40 % boost in topline sales and 5–10 pp margin improvement within six months.
  • Typical location fulfills 40+ incremental digital orders per month, keeping local dollars—and jobs—in the community.

• Clear path to scale
  • Self-serve onboarding beta shows a 30% conversion from inquiry to paid customer without human intervention.
  • Localized versions of the platform are in late-stage testing for Canada and the U.K., setting the stage for our first international rollouts in 2026.

These metrics confirm not just rapid top-line growth, but durable retention, expanding share of wallet, and a scalable operating model—all of which position Lula to become the default digital ordering backbone for everyday retail.

Investors

Business model

Lula’s revenue engine combines predictable SaaS subscriptions with high-margin transaction fees across two flagship products. Lula Direct powers a store’s own digital storefront—web, mobile, voice, kiosk, and in-store payments—priced at $49–$99 per location per month, plus a 1% fee on every first-party order. Lula Hub syndicates that same inventory to third-party marketplaces, handles routing, and reconciles payments; it commands a $39–$79 monthly fee and a 2 % share of marketplace GMV. Together, these streams yield a blended 3 % take rate on all transaction volume while anchoring stable SaaS revenue. The model is already delivering an average revenue per user of $68 per site, with meaningful upside as stores adopt additional modules. Thanks to self-serve onboarding and AI-driven support, our fully loaded customer-acquisition cost is recouped in five months, creating a capital-efficient growth loop where expanding GMV, rising ARPU, and quick payback compound to drive durable profitability. 

Market & competition

Everyday retail—convenience stores, gas-station marts, dollar outlets, drugstores, and specialty quick-turn shops—moves more than $700 billion in annual merchandise across North America, yet less than 6 % of those sales are transacted digitally. Post-pandemic consumer behaviour (sub-30-minute delivery, curb-side pickup, voice re-ordering) is pushing that penetration toward restaurant-like levels (~30 % digital), creating a multi-billion-dollar whitespace. We are starting in the U.S. and Canada, where there are ≈76 000 multi-unit chains with 10+ locations—our core ICP that already budgets for tech and can roll out regionally. Beyond that, the service-addressable market encompasses ≈550 000 individual stores (chains + independents) that could adopt at least one Lula module, while the global opportunity rises to ≈2.6 million small-format retail outlets across Europe, LatAm, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific.

Competitive set

1. Vertical marketplaces (GoPuff, Instacart, DoorDash Retail). Great consumer reach but charge high commissions, withhold customer data, and don’t offer first-party tools—eroding retailer margins and loyalty.

2. Restaurant-first order aggregators (Olo, Deliverect, ItsaCheckmate). Strong order-routing tech, but road-mapped for menus and meal tickets; they lack inventory logic, age-restricted compliance, and C-store workflows.

3. Legacy POS / ERP suites (NCR, Oracle, Lightspeed, Square). Deep in-store functionality, yet online-ordering add-ons are clunky, marketplace integrations shallow, and AI automation almost nonexistent.

4. White-label commerce platforms (Mercatus, Swiftly, Stor.ai). Target large grocers with six-figure contracts; their heavy, grocery-centric feature sets and high implementation costs leave SMB retailers underserved.

Why Lula wins

• Segment focus: Purpose-built for SKUs that “fit in a backpack,” with native handling of tobacco, alcohol, and age-verification—a gap for restaurant and grocery systems.

• Dual-channel economics: Single platform spans first-party storefronts and third-party marketplaces, letting stores capture higher-margin direct orders while still surfing marketplace demand.

• Plug-and-play tech: Lightweight APIs snap into legacy POS hardware in days, not months, avoiding rip-and-replace capex.

• AI automation: “Lula Operators” act as digital staff—adjusting pricing, syncing inventory, answering chats—delivering big-box sophistication without big-box budgets.

As digital share races upward, everyday retailers have to choose between ceding traffic to marketplaces or owning their own omnichannel experience. Lula is the only platform that lets them do both—profitably—turning a vast, fragmented market into a defensible, high-growth opportunity.

Vision & strategy

Lula’s long-term vision is to become the universal digital-ordering backbone for anything you can grab, pocket, or carry—across every channel, category, and continent. Over the next decade we will power 100,000+ retailers and service providers with a suite of platforms that let consumers order however they want (voice, text, kiosk, smart-home, car dash, or a store’s own branded app) and receive goods wherever they are—in under 30 minutes, sustainably.

To realize this vision, we are executing on four strategic pillars:

1. Omnichannel Access
   Build modular ordering interfaces—voice assistants, chatbots, direct web, in-store kiosks, and API hooks for emerging form factors—so any consumer interaction can convert into a sale without friction.

2. Category Expansion
   Extend beyond traditional convenience into pharmacy, pet care, beauty, electronics accessories, office supplies, and fresh-prepared foods—essentially any high-velocity item that fits in a backpack or small delivery bag.

3. Global Footprint
   Localize our platform for multiple languages, tax regimes, and payment rails, allowing us to launch in new countries with minimal engineering lift while empowering local fleets and gig-economy couriers.

4. Intelligent Fulfillment & Growth
   Layer AI agents that optimize pricing, promotions, and inventory across channels while routing orders through the fastest, greenest last-mile option—whether bike, scooter, EV, or autonomous robot.

By knitting these pillars together, Lula will give independent retailers everywhere the digital superpowers once reserved for global giants—driving profitable growth, resilient local economies, and a more equitable, on-demand future.