online-ordering
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The $15 Lunch That Learned to Think Like a Chef
Mendocino Farms turned the office sandwich into a seasonal, chef-driven product - then built a 100-store growth machine around the part fast casual often forgets: hospitality.
The Sports Bar Built for People Who Didn't Come Just for Sports
Miller's Ale House turned a Florida neighborhood tavern into a 112-location chain by making the game only half the attraction. The other half is a broad, value-minded menu designed to keep families, fans and after-work regulars at the same table.
Slim Chickens Built a 300-Store Flock on One Surprisingly Sticky Idea: Choice
The Fayetteville chain turned garage-tested tenders, 14 sauces and table-side hospitality into a mostly franchised global business. Its next test is harder: preserving that sense of choice and care while opening in more formats, markets and countries.
The 49-Step Biscuit Trying to Conquer America
Bojangles built a regional institution by refusing to microwave breakfast. Now the Charlotte chain is pairing hand-folded biscuits with AI drive-throughs in a bid to turn Carolina loyalty into a national franchise.
The Sandwich Chain Where Every Sub Helps Buy a Fire Truck
Two firefighter brothers turned steamed subs and a fire-station theme into a 1,300-store chain - and a charity that has bought more than $100 million in gear for first responders.
Cicis Bet the Whole Company on One Word: Unlimited
The Texas buffet chain turned all-you-can-eat pizza into a 40-year habit. After bankruptcy, a debt wipeout, and an AI hired as a social intern, it is still wagering that cheap and endless beats trendy.
The $1.5 Million Scoop: How Chicken Salad Chick Turned a Picnic Staple Into a Franchise Machine
Chicken Salad Chick took a dish associated with picnics and church lunches, gave it 12 personalities, and built a fast-casual growth story around the humble scoop. Its real product is not novelty alone - it is repeatable choice served with a neighborhood touch.
The Pizza Chain Built on Four Beautiful Mistakes
Ledo Pizza turned rectangular pans, pastry-like dough, smoked provolone and hurriedly cut pepperoni into a regional identity. Seventy years later, the family franchise is testing how far a Maryland original can travel without rounding off its edges.
The Pizza That Became a Place: How UNO Is Rebuilding Around Its Deep-Dish Original
An 83-year-old Chicago pie is now carrying a leaner restaurant company - through neighborhood dining rooms, hotel conversions, delivery counters and a brand story no rival can quite copy.
Potbelly Sandwich Works
Potbelly turned an antique shop's lunch counter into a repeatable neighborhood ritual. Now, under RaceTrac ownership, the question is whether its stove, hot peppers and lunch-hour warmth can travel to 2,000 shops without losing the odd little details that made the first one work.
Firebirds Wood Fired Grill
Firebirds found a durable gap between the neighborhood grill and the expense-account steakhouse. Now, with 71 restaurants, a paid loyalty tier and private-equity backing, it is trying to scale the feeling of dinner around a real fire.
Toast
Toast began with a stubbornly specific idea: restaurants deserved technology built for the rush. Now its software, payments, hardware and AI sit at the center of 180,000 locations - turning every order into a useful piece of operating data.
Checkmate
Checkmate (ItsaCheckmate.com Inc.) is a New York-based restaurant technology company that connects digital ordering channels to a restaurant's point-of-sale system. Founded in 2016 by Vishal Agarwal, its platform pipes orders from third-party marketplaces like DoorDash and Uber Eats directly into the POS, lets operators manage menus across dozens of channels from one dashboard, and now extends into first-party web and app ordering, self-service kiosks, voice AI for phone and drive-thru, catering, loyalty, and accounting reconciliation. The company reports more than 23,000 live restaurant locations and 130+ integrations, and raised a $10M Series B led by Tiger Global in October 2024.
MenuSifu
MenuSifu is a New York-based restaurant technology company that builds an integrated cloud POS ecosystem for restaurants, with deep roots serving Asian-American operators across the United States. Founded in 2014, its platform spans point-of-sale, online ordering, kitchen displays, self-ordering kiosks, loyalty and marketing, payment processing, and restaurant financing, now used by more than 15,000 restaurants. Backed by a $40M Series B in 2024, the company is expanding into AI-driven kitchen automation and fintech services for restaurant owners.
Sauce
Sauce is a Miami-based restaurant technology company that helps independent restaurants and small chains build a profitable direct online ordering and delivery business. Instead of surrendering 30% commissions and customer data to marketplaces like DoorDash and Uber Eats, restaurants use Sauce to take branded direct orders and fulfill them through a managed, commission-free courier network charged at a flat per-order fee. The platform bundles online ordering, managed delivery, live order support, local SEO, and AI-driven marketing and retention into a single system aimed at turning delivery from a cost center into a margin driver.
Innowi Inc.
Innowi Inc. is a Santa Clara, California restaurant-technology company that builds an all-in-one point-of-sale and ordering platform. Its stack spans POS, self-service kiosks, tabletop QR ordering, online ordering and delivery, a kitchen display system, marketing and rewards, analytics, and employee management - designed to help independent and multi-location restaurants cut third-party commission fees, sync orders across channels, and run leaner operations.
Blizzfull
Blizzfull is a Glendale, California restaurant technology company that bundles online ordering, POS, self-service kiosks, kitchen screens, branded websites and apps, marketing, and loyalty into one AI-powered platform. Founded in 2012 by web developers Adam Dougherty and Zach Zurn, it charges restaurants a flat monthly fee and takes 0% commission on direct orders, positioning itself against third-party delivery apps that take up to 30%. Blizzfull's pitch is that independent restaurants should own their customers, their data, and their revenue, and it says it powers more than 1,000 restaurants nationwide.
Snackpass
Snackpass is a restaurant technology company that builds an all-in-one marketing and point-of-sale platform for quick-service restaurants. It pairs hardware - registers, self-serve kiosks, kitchen display systems and pickup screens - with software for online ordering, loyalty, SMS marketing, analytics and AI. Founded by Yale students in 2017 as a social food-ordering app, it grew into a full operating system for takeout, serving thousands of restaurant operators and tens of millions of guests.
Touchpoint Restaurant Solutions
Touchpoint Restaurant Solutions (touchpoint.io) is a Palo Alto-based restaurant technology company that bundles point of sale, kitchen display, drive-thru line-busting, online ordering, loyalty, and AI-driven marketing into one unified platform branded OmniFusion and OmniLoyalty. Founded by Stanford-trained entrepreneurs led by CEO Israel L'Heureux, the company targets enterprise quick-service and pizza chains that want to consolidate a sprawling tech stack, own their guest data, and run loyalty programs that actually get used - it claims chain-wide participation rates of 80-90% versus a single-digit industry norm.
Woflow
Woflow is a San Francisco-based AI platform that lets enterprises build, train, and deploy AI agents to run critical operations - from merchant onboarding and catalog digitization to support and data quality. Originally a merchant data platform for food delivery marketplaces, it now powers operations at Uber, DoorDash, Square, Walmart, Toast and Shopify.