TouchBistro Raises $110M Amid New Appetite For Restaurant Tech

TouchBistro, a restaurant point-of-sale system, announced on Tuesday it nabbed $110 million (CAD $150 million) in growth financing led by Francisco Partners, enabling the company to expand its product line and bolster acquisition efforts. The company has raised $320.2 million in total, per Crunchbase data.

This latest round will enable the company to expand its product line and bolster acquisition efforts.

TouchBistro allows restaurants to manage reservations, online orders, payments and food inventory. The company has expanded since the pandemic to help customers and restaurants deal with contactless payments, online menus and food delivery.

Founded in 2010, Canada-based TouchBistro has expanded to over 100 countries and 16,000 restaurants.

Restaurants develop taste for tech

The pandemic has been a weird time for funding in the restaurant management technology space, if you look at the Crunchbase data. The sector drew $598 million in venture funding in 2020, then suffered a crash the following year with only $190 million pumped into the space. In 2022 that number peaked at $776 million as of November, the highest it has ever been.

This newest wave of restaurant tech funding marks a huge (and permanent) shift from the old way of thinking. Restaurants often operate on razor-thin margins and for a long time were wary of adopting technology that would cost more money.

The advent of DoorDash in 2013 and Uber Eats a year later helped change this dynamic, encouraging adoption of new technology (begrudgingly, as these companies gobbled up part of restaurants’ profits). The pandemic pushed even further adoption of technology to make it easy for customers to order takeout or browse QR-code menus instead of ordering with waitstaff.

Perhaps the most well-known company in restaurant management tech is Toast, the point-of-sale platform that allows customers to order and pay at the restaurant with its in-house app. Toast went public in 2021 following a successful $400 million Series F funding round.

Earlier this year, Saudi Arabia-based Foodics raised $170 million in Series C funding for its platform that manages employee schedules, food inventory and sales. Another, Belgium-based Deliverect, raised $150 million in Series D funding for its platform that helps restaurants keep track of order requests from multiple delivery platforms.

Illustration: Dom Guzman