Local businesses feeling impacts of Bitwise furloughs

FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) -- The fallout from Bitwise is spreading further in the community. Local companies are feeling the effects as the company's tech products go untouched during the furloughs.

When the pandemic stopped indoor dining, business owners started looking for solutions to keep their clients.

Rather than depending on third-party applications, like DoorDash and UberEats, some local businesses opted to have custom apps built.

Kuppa Joy turned to Ordrslip, a division of Bitwise, to give their customer base a boost beyond the caffeine they serve up.

"It's scary as a business to go down the lane that's really unknown with mobile pick up, but once we reached out, got on board, and for months now, we have about almost 5,000 customers on the app," said owner Zack Follett.

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Kuppa Joy's app just launched earlier this year. When news broke about Bitwise furloughs, it looked like those months of progress would suddenly be lost.

"We're worried because we had all of our information that we spent months to build this thing out," said Follett. "And now, who has access to that? How do we get access to that? If we wanted to go to another app company? How are we going to be able to move the information over?"

The app is running right now, but owner Zack Follett worries that any day they could wake up and have no access. The furloughs leave Follett with no one to contact for answers, so he's left looking for a new developer and the potential of having to start from square one.

"The biggest fear for us is if they have to go and re-download an app, I would love an update just to happen," said Follett. "But with no backend support from Ordrslip. I don't know if we're gonna be making that possible."

Follett wants his customers to know that if the Kuppa Joy app does go down, they have no control over it and they're working as hard as they can to keep it up and running.

Follett said he picked Ordrslip because it was local, and enjoyed working with the team. For the employees at Ordrslip and Bitwise left without work, the City of Fresno hopes to help them make connections and soon with a job fair.

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"The intention of the event is to provide actual hiring employers that are going to have jobs available," said Lance Lippincott, City of Fresno Economic Development Department. "ISD has been fantastic to lineup for us to have the computer lab, personnel is going to staff it, it's going to be a very holistic event."

That job fair will be held at City Hall on Friday, June 16 from 10 am to 1 pm.

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