In a nutshell:
- Choice, a B2B SaaS platform for restaurants, raised $ 2.5M in a new investment round. The total funding of the startup is $4.1M.
- J&T Ventures, a Prague-based venture capital fund, was leading the current round. Previous investors, Reflex Capital and Presto Ventures, also joined.
- The funding will be used to scale the service to four new markets in Central and Eastern Europe and to continue growing in the existing strong markets like Poland, Czech Rеpublic, Slovakia, Hungary, and Ukraine.
Their background story:
Choice is an online B2B subscription-based service that allows any restaurant to create a website and set up all necessary restaurant-related business tools on a single platform with joint administration: website, applications, online menus with QR payments, table reservations, a CRM system, and much more. Additionally, the platform can be integrated with POS systems and marketplaces such as Wolt, Bolt, Glovo, Foodora, and Uber Eats.
Choice was founded in 2020 by Alex Ilyash. It allows restaurants to digitize approximately 80% of their customer base and collect data on their preferences and frequency of visits, as well as additional personal information such as contact details or date of birth.
In their own words:
“99% of restaurants don’t know their customers. This is a real challenge for restaurant owners because they don’t know who their most loyal guests are, how often they visit the restaurant, what their preferences and allergies are, or how many people stop visiting the restaurant and for what reasons,” says Alex Ilyash, CEO and founder of Choice.
Milеstonеs and Nеxt Stеps:
According to the company’s data, Choice works with more than 16K restaurants worldwide, and 5K paying clients are actively using the platform. In 2023, over 2M orders totaling $42M were made in Choice’s partner restaurants.
Instead of competing with POS systems, Choice cooperates in providing integration between the back-office and the front-office of a restaurant.
Choice aims to become the leading solution in the CEE region by 2024, and across Europe within the next 3 years. The company’s team now includes more than 120 specialists.
Choice is actively recruiting sales representatives and account managers in all regions where the service is expanding its growth – Czech Rеpublic, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Kazakhstan, Georgia, and Croatia.
