One of Australia’s most beloved celebrity chefs, Maggie Beer, has joined a $1.1 million seed funding round for ‘all-in-one’ restaurant management system Restoplus.
Founded in 2019 and based in Beer’s home state of South Australia, Restoplus is aiming to address existing ‘inefficient and disjointed systems’ for restaurants by bundling services into a single streamlined platform.
In addition to Beer, Technology One (ASX: TNE) founder Adrian Di Marco and venture capital firms Investible and Skalata joined in on the seed round which will give the company fuel to expand internationally.
Based in Adelaide, Restoplus co-founders Ezhil Mohan and Nish Sowdri built the app to solve problems that they believe ‘hold the industry back’.
“There are so many different ways of ordering in a typical restaurant – walk-ins, phone orders, Uber Eats, in-restaurant QR-codes,” Mohan said.
“But if you ask a restaurant a simple question like ‘how many burgers did you sell last week?’, they have no idea because the data is siloed.”
Restoplus hopes to address these issues by providing restaurant managers with a branded website and mobile app, point-of-service (POS) system, QR ordering, inventory management, staff rostering, reservations, commission-free delivery service and SMS/email marketing - all under a single subscription.
The pair also claim that the system — used by more than 300 Australian restaurants —can help restaurateurs identify trends so they can better predict demand, manage stock, mitigate waste and optimise operations.
Ezhil said the platform was designed to put power back in the hands of venue operators who were suffering from delivery aggregators ‘clipping the ticket’ and diminishing long-term brand value.
“If the food delivery apps are providing all of your customers, your brand value is actually being hijacked,” Mohan said.
“Not many businesses consider the long-term implications.”
The co-founders hope that giving more restaurants the power to take control over their own delivery services will translate into bottom-line growth.
“Getting direct orders from consumers actually increases profitability by approximately 20 per cent,” Mohan claims.
“For an average restaurant that’s approximately $5,000 per month being added to the bottom line.”
Di Marco said Restoplus’s all-in-one platform went ‘far beyond’ what competitors like Mr Yum and Me&u were currently offering.
"Ezhil and Nish are redefining the restaurant management market by providing a globally scalable system that goes far beyond what current incumbents like Mr Yum are offering,” Di Marco said.
“I’m looking forward to working with the team to help them hyper-scale into another Aussie unicorn.”
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