While the restaurant industry represents nearly $800 billion in annual spending in the US, it remains highly fragmented, with 90% of restaurants supporting fewer than 50 employees and 70% of restaurants operating just one location, according to the National Restaurant Association. To help restaurant managers improve operations, startups are aiming to integrate tech into nearly every aspect of the business, from CRM to inventory to engaging visitors while they wait for a table.
Investors have poured nearly $2.5B into the restaurant tech category globally since 2012, across over 600 deals. There have also been a number of acquisitions, including Yelp’s recent acquisition of seating management tool Nowait, and Subway’s acquisition of mobile restaurant payments platform Avanti Commerce. Revel Systems, which had been one of the most well-funded companies in the space with $128.5M, was also acquired for over $580M by private equity firm Welsh Carson Anderson & Stowe.
We’re also seeing new investors in the space. Food delivery startup Just Eat, for example, recently launched a food tech accelerator whose investments included several restaurant tech startups. To better visualize the emerging restaurant tech startup scene, we put together the infographic below highlighting over 100 of these startups and the parts of the restaurant they target....
Startups have raised nearly $2.5B to integrate digital features into nearly every aspect of restaurant operations.