Why Chef Jose Andres & TGI Friday’s are Using this Philly Restaurant Tech Firm

Renowned chefs José Andrés and Michael Solomonov, Philadelphia coffee company La Colombe and national chain TGI Fridays are just a few names using a platform by a growing, venture-backed Philadelphia restaurant technology company now in a Series A round.

Three years ago, local entrepreneurs Andy Schwartz, Bhavik Patel and Chaz Brown set out to make restaurant back-of-the-house operations more streamlined. Enter XtraChef in late 2015, which in real time captures, digitizes, maps and auto-codes vendor invoices and inventory purchases.

The platform’s machine learning and optical character recognition technology replaces previously manual, paper-based processes susceptible to human error.

Revenue has grown threefold for the past two years, and xtraChef’s raised north of $5 million in funding so far, according to CEO Schwartz. The company in 2018 received $3 million in backing, led by New York venture capital firm Laconia Capital Group.

XtraChef is now raising a Series A round.

The company has grown to 25 employees split between its offices in Philadelphia and New York, which opened in December. The company more than doubled its staff in the past year, and there are plans to hire 40 more by December 2020 between the two offices.

Schwartz said there’s potential to expand in the near future to another food capital: Chicago.

Read the full article here.

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