Plate IQ is a restaurant management platform that wants to bring smart analytics to the restaurant industry. Find out everything you need to know about the startup today.
What Is Plate IQ?
Plate IQ is a startup that recently raised $4 million in new funding. The company’s goal is to help restaurants automate boring accounting work, allowing restaurant managers to focus on food and front-of-house stuff.
The latest funding round was led by Eileses Capital, the Y Combinator Continuity Fund, the Tamares Group, and Restaurant Group. The company plans to use that funding to continue expanding across the United States, Canada, and Europe.
Today, Plate IQ’s software is already being used by a number of major players in the world of fine dining, including Nobu Restaurants, the Thomas Keller Restaurant Group (known for operating the French Laundry), Vino Volo, Quince Restaurant, and others.
Plate IQ was created by co-founders Bhavuk Kaul and Ram Jayaraman. The platform launched in 2014.
How Does Plate IQ Work?
Plate IQ’s software is designed to simplify the accounting side of the restaurant business. Specifically, the software helps restaurants automate accounts payable and other accounting work, letting them focus on more important things.
After signing up for Plate IQ, the company’s mobile app lets restaurant managers take pictures of a paper invoice. This causes the invoice to immediately become digitized.
The app then extracts the data from the invoice and syncs it with the restaurant’s existing accounting software – like QuickBooks and other popular platforms.
Other features of the software include the ability to pay vendors via the Plate IQ mobile app, track the cost of ingredients over time, and use that data to determine which menu items are worth the price or not – or which vendors provide the best price for quality.
About Plate IQ
Plate IQ was founded by Bhavuk Kaul and Ram Jayaraman in 2014 “after they learned how painful and expensive it was for restaurants to manually process all of their paper invoices”, explains the official website’s “Our Story” page.
They saw the firsthand negative impact of data entry, including the time it took, the frequent errors, and the lack of smart data gathered from the process.
To date, Plate IQ has gathered processed more than $675 million invoices. The company claims to have saved 135,000 hours for customers, and promises to cut your bookkeeping costs in half.
You can contact Plate IQ by email at [email protected] or by phone at (415) 805-3406.
Plate IQ Summary
Ultimately, Plate IQ plans to use the new financing to hire and expand into new markets geographically. The company will need to compete with Sourcery, another venture-backed platform aiming at the restaurant industry.
Sourcery’s additional advantage is that it has expanded to work with wholesale food vendors and hospitality groups – not just restaurants – where it handles all aspects of accounts payable and receivable.
Watch for Plate IQ to appear at a restaurant near you in the future – the company claims to be working with “more than 1,000 restaurants across the country from white tablecloth to food trucks, explains Kaul in an interview with TechCrunch.
They’re also expanding to Europe and Canada.
