aid: butter-systems
accessModel:
  pricing: unknown
  onboarding: unknown
  trial: false
  try_now: false
  public: false
  label: Unknown
  confidence: low
  source: []
  generated: '2026-07-22'
  method: derived
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/butter-systems.png
name: Butter Systems
description: 'Butter Systems was a San Francisco restaurant-technology startup founded
  in 2013 by Sam Brin and Jon Li and backed by Y Combinator (batch S13). The company
  replaced the paper restaurant menu with a locked-down tablet at the table, letting
  diners browse an interactive menu, place food and drink orders on demand without
  waiting for a server, and request the check, while restaurant operators adjusted
  menu items, pricing, and promotions on the fly through a web back office. Butter
  Systems raised roughly $120K across two seed rounds in 2013 from Y Combinator and
  Fenox Venture Capital, and shut down in 2014. Y Combinator lists the company as
  inactive, and its buttersystems.com domain is now a parked "domain may be for sale"
  page. Butter Systems published no public API, developer portal, SDK, or machine-readable
  specification, and none survives in the Internet Archive record; it is retained
  in the API Evangelist network as a closed-company reference only.'
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/butter-systems/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
x-type: company
x-source: vc-portfolio
x-backed-by:
- a16z
x-backed-by-verified: false
x-backed-by-note: 'Enrichment could not corroborate an a16z investment. Public sources
  (Crunchbase, Tracxn, FinSMEs, Y Combinator) attribute Butter Systems'' 2013 seed
  funding to Y Combinator and Fenox Venture Capital only. The a16z attribution came
  from the VC-portfolio harvest and should be treated as unverified.'
x-status: defunct
x-status-detail: 'Shut down in 2014; Y Combinator lists the company as inactive. buttersystems.com
  resolves (HTTP 200) but serves a parked domain-for-sale page. api./docs./developer.buttersystems.com
  do not resolve. /.well-known/security.txt and /llms.txt both return 404.'
x-founded: '2013'
x-closed: '2014'
x-accelerator: Y Combinator S13
x-api-surface: none
specificationVersion: '0.20'
created: '2026-07-17'
modified: '2026-07-20'
tags:
- Company
- Restaurant Technology
- Point of Sale
- Food and Beverage
- Ordering
- Tablet
- Y Combinator
- Defunct
apis: []
common:
- type: GitHubOrganization
  name: Butter Systems on GitHub
  url: https://github.com/buttersystems
- type: CompanyProfile
  name: Butter Systems on Y Combinator
  url: https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/butter-systems
- type: CompanyProfile
  name: Butter Systems on Crunchbase
  url: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/butter-systems
- type: Archive
  name: buttersystems.com in the Internet Archive
  url: https://web.archive.org/web/*/buttersystems.com
x-enrichment:
  date: '2026-07-20'
  status: minimal
  artifacts_added: 0
  pass: local-v1
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com
- FN: APIs.json
  email: info@apis.io