Edmonton-based restaurant management software provider Truffle has secured an all-equity $2.3 million CAD seed funding round as it attempts to compete with incumbents and bigger players in the space.
“As a former restaurant owner, [Truffle] solved a lot of problems that the incumbent point of sale systems haven’t been able to.”
– Arden Tse, investment manager at Accenture Fund.
The round, which closed in June, was led by Accelerate Fund III, with participation from Sprout.vc and Birchcliff Partners. A spokesperson for Truffle told BetaKit that the financing also included a combination of existing investors and new private investors, though their names were not disclosed.
Truffle launched during the pandemic and claims to have onboarded 500 customers across Canada in that time.The startup positions itself against established restaurant management tech providers, such as Montréal-based Lightspeed, Toronto’s Touchbistro and Snappy, as well as Jack Dorsey’s Square.
Founded by Omer Choudhary, Truffle offers a point-of-sale system for restaurants. Its platform consists of features such as cloud kitchen management, contactless food pickup, inventory, online ordering, and driver management. Additionally, Truffle also offers self-service table ordering, much like Ottawa-founded Tablz.
Truffle’s latest feature is GoBox, an automated pickup locker that allows for convenient self-serve pickup for customers and third-party deliveries without staff supervision.
Choudhary first started working on a POS system eight years ago called IQ Interactive. He told the Edmonton Taproot that he grew that business to about 450 customers, and that they will be transitioned to Truffle overtime.
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Currently, Truffle’s client base includes Canadian breakfast food chain Sunset Grill, as well as Edmonton restaurants Mikado and Northern Chicken.
Truffle said it intends to double its team to about 25 people by the end of the year, with most of the new hires located in Edmonton. The company’s LinkedIn page shows a current headcount of between 11 to 50 people.
According to Arden Tse, investment manager of Accelerate Fund II and III, the investment firm sees Truffle playing a huge role in the transformation of restaurants by using technology to give fewer staff the capacity to do more as “the labour shortage grows tighter over time.”
“As a former restaurant owner, I could see that Truffle’s digital platform solved a lot of problems that the incumbent point of sale systems haven’t been able to,” Tse said.
Featured image from Truffle’s website.