BitNinja’s New Funding Shows Operational Efficiency in Restaurant Tech by 2022

Despite the constant flood of doomsday headlines as the post-pandemic dark clouds gather and customer behavior returns to mid-pandemic, not all news is bad news when it comes to restaurant technology these days. In fact, some startups seem to be doing well, especially if their mission is to help restaurants save money.

Take BitNinja, which announced $11.3 million in funding this week. The company allows fast-food restaurants to outsource their drive-thru through Bite Ninja’s cloud-labor platform. Beat Ninja employees can operate a drive-thru remotely from their home anywhere in the country and can also operate multiple drive-thrus during their shift.

The ability to distribute a single worker across multiple restaurants and treat drive-thru labor as an “elastic” resource that can flexibly rotate or decrease throughout the day is a fundamental rethinking of the fast food restaurant. At a time when most fast-casual restaurants are struggling to hire workers. According to the announcement, BitNinja is currently running tests at five of the top twenty quick service chains in the US.

Other companies that help restaurants and retailers become more efficient and bring cost savings to operations are still growing and getting new funding, despite what many see as a massive cutback in food tech funding. For example, Galli Solutions, a company that helps restaurants accurately forecast and optimize menus, raised $14.2 million this spring. Dash, a startup that builds plug-and-play automated McLain solutions, raised a $24 million Series A in February and saw an additional follow-on investment by Chipotle in June. That same month, food waste reduction startup Gooder raised $8 million in funding earlier this summer. Last month, AFresh, a company that helps food retailers improve fresh food inventory and reduce waste, raised $115 million in Series B funding.

If restaurant technology funding in 2021 was all about ghost kitchens and digital transformation, the big buzzwords for 2022 will be operational efficiency and cost savings. Startups using automation, cloud computing, AI and other transformative technologies to help streamline operations will continue to do well, especially as restaurant operators face acute labor shortages and the cost of doing business amid rising inflation and ongoing supply chain disruptions.

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