Known as the “Shopify of catering”, this company has not only helped restaurants achieve significant online revenue growth by providing full-stack digital services and AI-driven management tools for small and medium-sized restaurants, but also quickly become an industry unicorn through its unique business model and efficient operational strategy. This article will provide an in-depth analysis of how Owner empowers the catering industry through AI technology and how it has won $120 million in financing in just a few years, becoming the focus of the industry’s attention.
Another corporate unicorn was born.
The company is called Owner and is called “Shopify of the restaurant world”.
Owner’s business is similar to Shopify, mainly providing full-stack digital solutions, except that the target audience has changed from a consumer brand to a restaurant. In just 3 years, Owner has served more than 10,000 restaurants and helped them achieve a 30% growth rate in online revenue.
Not only that, Owner also plans to integrate AI into the company’s business. Currently, the company is developing a next-generation solution: creating an “AI executive” for restaurants. These AI agents can not only do marketing and technical work, but also manage “AI employees” and human employees to improve restaurant business efficiency.
Relying on the huge imagination space brought by AI, Owner recently won $120 million in financing, and its valuation has risen to $1 billion.
From being rejected twice by YC to becoming a unicorn valued at $1 billion, let’s take a look at how Owner did it.
01 $500 per month to solve the online dilemma of small restaurants
The new crown epidemic has accelerated the online catering, and our country’s catering SaaS companies have developed earlier, but the United States is still in the dividend period.
Mainstream food delivery platforms have become the choice of most restaurant chains, while a large number of independent restaurants have fallen into the dilemma of digitalization.
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These independent restaurants often rely on platforms like Yelp, OpenTable, and Grubhub for orders, with high commissions (up to 30% on some platforms). The technical development and maintenance of the restaurant’s self-operated APP is a big cost burden for them.
Most of the independent restaurant owners in the United States are chefs, restaurant managers or immigrants (specialty food owners), and the restaurant staffing is poor, and there is generally a lack of SEO optimization experience.
American consumers are accustomed to searching for nearby restaurants through Google, and local searches are in high demand, which makes it easy for independent restaurants to be overwhelmed by chain brands or competitors in search results.
Owner, founded by 25-year-old Adam Guild, gives these small and medium-sized restaurants another digital option. In three years, Owner has provided AI infrastructure for more than 10,000 independent restaurants in the United States, affecting and radiating 60 million consumers.
An independent restaurant can build its own app and website for just $500 per month. These infrastructures will integrate and automate functions such as food ordering, delivery, marketing automation, and SEO optimization that restaurant owners can’t understand.
Specifically, the value of Owner is mainly reflected in three aspects:
(1) Build a digital system and “AI butler” to escort the restaurant business in the whole cycle
In the built APP and website, the Owner system is equivalent to a “housekeeper” for the restaurant business. The system first finds out the rhythm of the restaurant’s daily operation, such as when the most orders are placed every day and the consumption of ingredients. Then use the “control tower” and “scoreboard” to record the restaurant’s indicators, grasp the health status of the restaurant, and find out immediately if there are fewer orders and more bad reviews.
In promoting the development of restaurants, it has a set of fixed processes. Every week, a “Maple” newsletter is sent to the restaurant owner, which clearly lists what the restaurant has done well and where there are problems, and can also make an appointment for the restaurant staff meeting.
In terms of long-term planning, the Owner system has prepared a growth plan for 6 to 12 months to help restaurants set long-term goals. At the same time, specific action guidelines are formulated every month to closely integrate the restaurant’s daily work with long-term strategy and move in the direction of growth.
(2) Built-in 90 SEO optimization points, online revenue increased by 30% year-on-year traffic password
Nowadays, it’s hard enough to entice people to order directly from a website, no matter what kind of deals a restaurant offers, let alone a third-party app. Therefore, doing a good job in SEO optimization has become an extremely important loss.
Professional SEO guidance can improve online visibility, accurately attract target customers, and enhance brand trust at a lower cost. Owner relies on 90 built-in SEO optimization points to AI generate pages that meet the food search habits.
For example, many people search for “vegetarian-friendly restaurants” (specialty cuisines), “restaurants suitable for family dinners” (scenario-based demand), and “best Pad Thai in Los Angeles” (region + category), and Owner helps filter out high-conversion, low-competition long-tail keywords, so that website pages can easily appear in search results and attract target customers.
Not only that, the Owner system also knows how to make people who enter the restaurant website really place orders to buy things, and on average, the order rate of people who enter the store can be doubled. In just 28 days, the number of people who find restaurant websites by search can increase by 30%. If the restaurant uses the Owner APP, the number of regular customers coming back to place orders can double.
Restaurants that use the Owner system can earn 30% more money directly online every year than before, and the business is booming. Pizza restaurant Sarkis said that after using Owner for one year, they have achieved long-term customer retention and new customer expansion, with online sales increasing by $300,000 and profits by $100,000.
(3) 2025 AI Strategy: 3 Intelligent Executives + Conversational Agents
For independent restaurants, in addition to traffic promotion, they also pay more attention to the management value brought by catering SaaS itself.
In Owner’s 2025 plan, they will launch the first batch of “AI restaurant executives” for independent restaurants to manage “AI employees” and human employees, performing marketing and technical work. Thereinto:
- AI CMO (Chief Marketing Officer): You can proactively remind marketing nodes, such as “Memorial Day is still 7 days away, have you launched relevant activities?” ”； Real-time reporting results, such as “This month’s same-store sales increased by 7% due to SEO”; Respond flexibly to emergencies, such as automatically adjusting menu settings when there is a shortage of ingredients.
- AI CFO (Chief Financial Officer): Can answer restaurant owners’ questions in real time, such as “how to balance cost reduction and quality”, and provide cost optimization solutions through data analysis.
- AI CTO (Chief Technology Officer): Continuously optimize the restaurant website and app experience, keep up with technology trends, and automatically handle technical support issues.
In addition, Owner will also create an AI Agent for conversational pages to further improve service efficiency.
02 “Monthly fee model + white label delivery” saves 30% commission, and the company finalizes 120 million financing in 6 days
Owner is known as the “Shopify of the catering industry”, and like Shopify, it uses low-threshold digital tools to help small and medium-sized businesses break away from the monopoly of large platforms and independently control online channels and customer relationships.
In terms of disassembly, Owner adopts a fixed monthly fee payment method. Restaurants pay a transparent fee every month to unlock a full suite of digital tools, and all order revenue goes directly into their pockets. There are no hidden deductions, no proportional commissions, and every turnover clearly belongs to the merchant.
It’s important to note that Owner does not operate its own independent delivery fleet. Since its inception, Owner has been working with third-party delivery services DoorDash and Uber Eats to fulfill delivery orders placed through itself.
Owner does this by utilizing a “white label” delivery model, which uses DoorDash and Uber Eats drivers on a flat-fee basis. This approach allows restaurants to take control of customer relationships and ordering experiences while still benefiting from reliable delivery services.
This charging system, which really helps small and medium-sized restaurants increase profit margins, is in stark contrast to the high commissions of third-party takeaway platforms.
Commissions from mainstream restaurant takeout platforms: DoorDash and Uber Eats both charge 15%-30% for delivery and 6% for self-pickup; Grubhub charges 5%-15%. Restaurants also need to pay third-party takeaway platform tablet rental fees, marketing or promotion fees, etc.
From the perspective of the composition of the Owner team, the company’s senior management team has rich Internet experience and catering experience. The team composition of Owner is as follows:
- Chief Revenue Officer Kyle Norton, who previously managed Shopify’s $300 million ARR business, has expanded the Owner revenue team to more than 100 people with the efficient revenue operations system he introduced from Shopify.
- Hengam Stanfield, Owner Community Director, from the pizza shop chain;
- Customer Success Team Member Phillip Hang is from a sushi chain brand.
The team has a 4.9-star rating on the job search platform Glassdoor, and the CEO approval rate is 100%.
Looking back on the five years of entrepreneurship, founder Adam Guild revealed that the company was rejected by YC twice, and was rejected by dozens of investors and hundreds of customers in the first three years. Later, YC got on board when Owner made a Series C funding round.
Today, Owner has successfully raised $178 million, including a $33 million Series B funding round co-led by Redpoint Ventures and Altman Capital in January 2024. Recently, the company has just completed a Series C financing of $120 million, which was completed in just 6 days, which shows that investors are optimistic about Owner.
This also reveals the reshaping of the value of traditional SaaS by AI.
In the past, SaaS essentially brought online and standardized the “best practices” of certain business processes, which improved efficiency but limited room for cost reduction and efficiency increase. Now, with the empowerment of AI, technology service providers will not only provide tool-based functional modules, but also have the opportunity to enter the actual “labor market” and complete specific tasks like human employees.
In a way, AI is redefining the growth boundaries of traditional SaaS enterprises.
