Eat App

Eat App is a global restaurant technology company that provides a cloud-based management platform for restaurants, hotels, and other venues. The platform enables venues to accept online reservations seamlessly, manage tables, and enhance customer relationship management (CRM). It utilizes AI to improve operational efficiency, provides marketing automation, and helps build a comprehensive guestbook.

The company also offers a consumer app and website for discovering and booking restaurant tables online. According to the company, the system has seated over 100 million guests, and the number continues to grow.

Eat was founded by Nezar Kadhem and David Feuillard in 2015 and has raised $13M to date     from Silicon Valley's 500 startups, Middle East Venture Partners (MEVP), Derayah VC, amongst other business angels. The company is currently operational across the world, with offices in Dubai and the United States.

For restaurants
Eat App is an all-in-one cloud-based management platform for restaurants, hotels, hospitality groups, and other venues. Restaurant operators use Eat App to increase revenue, improve operational efficiency, and drive repeat visits. This is achieved through features like reservation and table management, waitlist handling, CRM, advanced analytics, a marketing suite, operational automation, and extensive integrations.

Eat App’s reservation system replaces the traditional pen and paper method, to allow for a digital record of all reservations, all guests that have previously visited the restaurant, as well as analytics on the performance of the restaurant. The table management feature simplifies traditional restaurant operations by providing a live snapshot of current status, seating optimization, and shift management.

The restaurant automation feature saves time by managing tasks such as guest tagging, messaging, payment collection, and reservation status updates in the background. The advanced CRM and analytics suite gathers and monitors data to build a segmented guestbook for personalized marketing and provides dashboards for data-driven decision-making. Additionally, the review feature makes it easy for restaurants to automatically collect reviews from their guests.

Eat App’s extensive integration suite centralizes and simplifies restaurant operations.

Phone integration connects the reservation system to on-premise phones, enhancing guest relations and reservation handling. The point-of-sale (POS) integration links POS tickets and reservations, enriching guest data and enabling personalized service. The hotel property management system (PMS) integration links hotel stay information with reservations, improving restaurant hospitality for hotels. Payments integrations facilitate upfront payments or deposits for events, special offers, or reducing no-shows.

Additionally, Eat App includes a chit printer function that seamlessly prints reservation details at host stands and a review management feature that allows restaurants to manage online reviews directly within the platform. Eat App serves restaurant and hospitality groups such as Radisson, The Maine, Four Seasons, and One & Only.

For users
The consumer software and website allows users to discover restaurants, search for available time slots and reserve a table online. The reservations are synced in real-time to Eat App’s reservation system installed at the restaurant. After the reservation is complete, the user receives a confirmation email, SMS and WhatsApp, and is able to share the reservation details with friends, update or cancel the reservation and book an Uber to the restaurant.

The service partnered with Google to bring “Reserve with Google” to restaurants around the world, in addition to partnerships with Facebook, Instagram, TripAdvisor, Zomato, Resy, Careem, and numerous other booking channels. Providing users with multiple streams of restaurant discovery and reservation.

History & Investments
In February 2015, Eat App raised $300k from Bahrain-based business angel group TENMOU.

In June 2018, Eat raised $1.2 million from Dubai-based Middle East Venture Partners (MEVP).

In February 2020, Eat App raised $5 million in a Series B funding round led by 500 Startups, Derayah Venture Fund, and MEVP, with participation from a few angel investors and family members.

In February 2021, Eat App launched its technology with The Emaar Hospitality Group, implementing it across over 50 restaurants in Emaar properties and hotels. The cloud-based system runs natively on iPads in each restaurant, providing Emaar staff access to reservations and guest information, and integrates with the U by Emaar loyalty app to personalize service.

On September 28, 2022, Eat App announced the closing of an $11 million Series B funding round. The investment was led by Middle East Venture Partners (MEVP), 500 Startups, Derayah Venture Capital, Dallah Albaraka, Ali Zaid Al Quraishi & Brothers Company, and Rasameel Investment Company, with participation from existing investors.

Reservations partnerships
Eat App has formed several key partnerships to improve its reservation services.

In 2017, it partnered with TripAdvisor. In 2019, it teamed up with Google to introduce 'Reserve with Google'. The same year, it also partnered with Zomato. In 2020, Eat App partnered with Facebook, Instagram, Resy (continuing even after Resy was acquired by Amex), and Careem. In February 2023, Eat App partnered with Mozrest, further strengthening its reservation and guest management capabilities.

Integrations (POS / Payment / PMS) partnerships
Eat App integrated partnerships to improve the POS, payment, and PMS sectors.

In August 2023, Eat App partnered with Foodics to help restaurant owners track guest spending and start orders automatically. In May 2023, Eat App integrated with Spades, acquired by Qlub. In January 2024, Eat App partnered with Tap, and in April 2024, it partnered with Telr to offer competitive online payment rates in the UAE and Saudi Arabia.