Restaurant Tech Startups funded by Y Combinator (YC) 2026

Elyra is an AI reservation system for restaurants with built-in voice and email agents that handle bookings end-to-end.

Zavo is the first AI-point of sale platform for restaurants. We unify payments, point of sale, and AI agents into one seamless platform, allowing business to accept payments, manage operations and automate manual processes with Ai. From reservations, to payments to point of sale, we have built the full restaurant tech stack in-house with AI automation across all products. We started Zavo in May 2025, currently over 800 businesses of different sizes use Zavo to accept payments and manage operations

Certus AI is replacing the restaurant phone line with Voice AI. Restaurants lose up to $100,000 per year per location from missed calls, lost orders, and abandoned hold lines. Staff are overwhelmed. IVRs frustrate customers. Call centers are expensive and impersonal. It’s 2025. Guests don’t leave voicemails or wait on hold. They just move on. Certus is an AI voice agent built for restaurants. It answers every call, 24/7 — taking orders, processing deliveries, booking reservations, upselling, and handling complaints in English, Spanish, French and more. Certus is built to manage the phone line end to end, from the customer call to the restaurant tech stack, with zero human intervention required. It currently integrates with industry-leading systems like Toast, Square, Clover, UberEats, DoorDash, and more. We’re building the voice layer of the modern restaurant — the employee they’ll never fire. We started Certus because we lived the pain. Gurveer (CEO) grew up answering phones in his family’s restaurant and helped operate them, growing from 1 to 11 locations in 7 years. Later, he and Adam (CRO) ran a restaurant growth startup to help others increase revenue, but kept watching clients bleed cash because no one picked up the phone. So we built the solution the industry always wished existed. Until now, this problem was considered unsolvable. But Voice AI has finally crossed the conversational chasm and 72% of consumers now prefer AI over humans as long as it means faster and better service. More importantly, the market is begging for this. The North American restaurant industry crossed $1 trillion in 2024, and it's projected to hit $1.5 trillion in 2025. Yet over $100 billion is still lost annually to missed calls, human error, and outdated tech. As the market continues to grow, so do the losses! Our customers say it best: - “Certus changed my life overnight.” - “We were losing the ability to give great in-house service — the phone was killing us.” - “70% of my business comes through the phone. That’s mine and my 16 staffs livelihood.” - “Before Certus, I used to lose 40 - 60 calls a day…. now my printer just stays printing!” - “I’ve been in the business 38 years. I’ve been waiting for this since then.” Certus is here to fix the $120B phone problem — one call at a time. And in doing so, we’re redefining how the restaurant industry communicates forever, starting with the phone line.

Chow Central is building technology to disrupt the food industry in Nigeria. The goal is to profitably provide food to as many people as possible in record time. Chow Central has launched its first product "500chow". A delivery-only quick service restaurant that serves customers in record time. 500chow has 10x lower costs than traditional brick-and-mortar restaurants, and 10x more online orders. Our customers love us for our super fast and cheaper deliveries. We are able to do this by launching hyper-locally within a 3km radius. We are very focused on solving real problems in the food industry one scalable product at a time.

Superorder enables restaurant chains to build customer loyalty, enhance operational efficiency, and maximize profitability. Superorder has a robust network of restaurant partners that include Marco's Pizza, KFC, Pizza Hut, Wow Bao, and Del Taco.

Atlas is building the operating system for restaurants. Atlas is the easiest way to start, run and grow any restaurant online and offline. We are the team that previously built Grain, a venture-backed online restaurant, to millions in revenue. Team and investors are from Grain, Accenture, Microsoft, Udacity, McKinsey, Salesforce, Y Combinator and others. https://atlas.kitchen

Avocado is a modern point-of-sale system for restaurants, powered by a built-in AI agent. More than just a POS, Avocado combines order management, KDS, kiosks, and online ordering in one platform - and lets restaurants control everything with simple voice or text commands. Want to change your menu, check your sales, or optimize pricing? Just ask. Avocado’s AI understands your business and takes action instantly, freeing up owners and staff to focus on what matters most: great food and service.

Presto automates big chain restaurants like McDonald's, Starbucks, KFC, Chili's with a combination of Computer Vision, Voice AI, payments and advanced hw/sw solutions. We're obsessed with introducing next-gen tech to advance physical industries and delight consumers.

OfOne is building software to automate order taking at fast-food drive-thrus. Using conversational AI, we help restaurant chains operate more efficiently and level-up their customer experience. OfOne can answer questions, intelligently upsell - like suggesting ice cream on a hot day - and always says please and thank you. There are 200,000 drive-thrus in the US and they are the industry's largest order channel. Our mission is to deliver human centric experiences that help restaurant operators prosper, deliver delight for their customers, and empower their workers.

We connect applications to drive more orders and better customer experiences for restaurants. The typical restaurant now uses more than two dozen different applications to run their business. Specifically, we connect, warehouse and route the data to improve analytics, marketing, operations and finance. Our customers include brands like Frank Pepe’s, Halal Guys, Wings Over and more.

HigherMe is all-in-one hiring software for restaurant and retail businesses to easily recruit, screen, interview, and onboard employees. Quickly review applications, schedule interviews, manage job board postings, and fill out employee paperwork from anywhere on any device. Created by a former multi-unit franchisee, HigherMe reduces the time and cost of hiring using a mobile-first applicant tracking system, Text-To-Apply technology, one-click interview scheduling, video cover letters, and more. With over three million applications submitted using our cloud-based software, say goodbye to the stack of paper résumés and easily fill open jobs anywhere, anytime.