Turning existing restaurants into cloud kitchens

Acelerate provides a service for restaurants to manage their entire digital footprint, including orders, menu updates and marketing, from one unified platform

Spotted: AI software company Acelerate, which aims to help restaurants benefit from their infrastructure, has recently announced the closing of a €12.15 million Series A investment round led by American venture capital firm Sequoia Capital. 

Acelerate provides a service for restaurants to manage their entire digital footprint, including orders, pricing, menu updates, sales and marketing. The company aims to help the increasing number of restaurants that are selling through multiple other platforms (like Doordash, Uber Eats or GrubHub) by unifying where these platforms are managed from.

Acelerate has also developed seven proprietary restaurant brands, all with their own menus, which they license to restaurants. This “host kitchen” model allows restaurants to maximise their space during downtimes and generate added revenue. 

For example, an ice cream shop is popular in the summer, but struggles during the winter months. A partnership with Acelerate will license the eatery and provide it with the rights, training and cooking instructions to operate another restaurant from that same space. Amongst Acelerate’s customers using the software platform are Applebee’s, Famous Dave’s and Fatburger. In addition to licensing its own brands, Acelerate partners with existing restaurant brands to license out their menus to other restaurants.  

The software side of the business operates as a monthly subscription model. From a licensing perspective, Acelerate charges a 40 per cent fee from restaurant partners, which covers all third-party marketplace, order processing and delivery fees. 

The new capital will be used to continue growing the team and product. 

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