Innovorder Raises $22M for AI Restaurant Tech

Jan de Vries · 2026-06-04

Innovorder, a Paris-based scale-up that helps restaurants go digital, just scored $22 million in a new funding round. The cash injection is meant to speed up their push into AI-first restaurant management. ### Who's Behind the Money? The round was led by UL Invest, which is the family office of tech entrepreneur Laurent Useldinger. It's a mix of a capital increase and buying out some shares from earlier investors. Evolem, a family office from Lyon that's been backing Innovorder since 2019, is sticking around as a shareholder. Jérôme Varnier, CEO and co-founder of Innovorder, put it this way: "In eight years, we've grown from a startup to a profitable scale-up and leader in our markets. With UL Invest, we're giving ourselves the means to become the European champion of restaurant digitalisation. Our ambition is clear: to make Innovorder the benchmark scale-up in European restech, by combining organic growth, targeted acquisitions, and geographic expansion." ### What Innovorder Actually Does Founded back in 2014 by Varnier, Romain Melloul, and Olivier Loverde, Innovorder builds software for the front-of-house in restaurants. Their all-in-one SaaS platform covers pretty much everything a point of sale needs: - Order taking (POS, kiosks, online ordering, QR codes) - Payment processing (POS tied to their own Innovorder Pay) - Kitchen display systems (KDS) - Business management (back-office, Atlas AI reporting) - Customer loyalty programs ### Serving Both Sides of the Market The company works with two main types of clients. On the commercial side, that includes quick-service restaurants, bakeries, coffee shops, food courts, and transport catering (think stations, airports, trains, and cruises). For contract catering, they serve companies, schools, universities, hospitals, and healthcare groups. ### Why This Matters Here's the thing: the European contract catering market is worth about $24 billion, and most of it is still running on outdated tech. Innovorder claims it's the only major cloud-native player in this space. They already equip the ten largest contract caterers in France, including big names like Sodexo, Elior, Compass, and API Restauration. On the commercial side, they work with brands like La Croissanterie and Amorino. ### Big Plans for European Growth Innovorder isn't stopping at France. They've announced an ambitious expansion strategy across Europe. Right now, they're active in France, Morocco, Spain, and Italy, but they want to be the pan-European leader by 2030. That means covering all ways people eat (on-site, delivery, takeaway, drive-thru) and all market sectors (commercial, contract, and leisure catering). To make this happen, they've brought in some notable entrepreneurs and co-investors who'll also help with governance. Names like Jalel Souissi (co-founder of Acrelec) and GemTech Investors, which was founded by Stéphane Epin (a former partner at European private equity fund Astorg). ### What the Investor Says Laurent Useldinger from UL Invest explained why they jumped in: "Innovorder brings together everything we look for at UL Invest: an exceptional founding team, a differentiating product, leadership positions in markets undergoing full digitalisation, and existing profitability. We're proud to support Jérôme, Romain, and Olivier in this new phase, and to provide them with our experience in SaaS scaling and our network of co-investing entrepreneurs to make Innovorder a European champion." ### AI-First Transformation With this funding, Innovorder is also doubling down on its AI-first transformation, which started about 18 months ago. They've built a dedicated team and already deployed their first AI agents for clients. At the heart of this strategy is their proprietary solution called Atlas. It uses a fleet of AI agents to give European restaurateurs a new generation of tools that can automate daily operations while still working with their existing software setup. ### The Numbers Look Good Innovorder says it's been profitable since 2024, with a 40% annual organic growth rate. They're expecting to hit $16.5 million in revenue by 2025. Not bad for a company that started as a small startup eight years ago. ### What This Means for Restaurants For restaurant owners, this is good news. It means more competition in the tech space, which usually leads to better products and lower prices. And with AI agents handling routine tasks, staff can focus on what really matters: serving customers and creating great experiences. As Innovorder pushes into new markets, we'll likely see more restaurants across Europe ditching their old systems for something smarter.