True margin on every plate
Invoices are read automatically, so the cost of a dish follows the price of butter this week, not the price someone typed into a spreadsheet last winter.
Seed round · Restaurant analytics · Chicago
Independent restaurants deserve a finance team.
Most independent restaurants run on a point-of-sale report, a spreadsheet and the owner's memory of last Friday. Cardinal Metrics reads the sales system, the supplier invoices and the payroll file, then tells the owner each morning what yesterday really earned, which dishes quietly lose money and which night of the week needs one fewer cook.
Seed customers pay from week one. Forty kitchens live before we opened the round.
Traction in the first fourteen months
- Restaurants paying every month
- 1,340
- Annual recurring revenue
- $2.1 M
- Of customers still active after a year
- 97%
- Average margin gain in six months
- 4.3 pts
What an owner sees before the first delivery arrives
We built Cardinal Metrics beside forty kitchens, from a ten-seat ramen counter to a three-room supper club.
A forecast that knows your weather
Covers, reservations, local events and rain feed a plain-language forecast. The kitchen preps for what is likely to walk in, not what walked in last year.
Schedules that follow the covers
Cardinal suggests which shifts to trim and which to add, and shows the cost of each choice before the schedule goes to the team.
Alerts that matter, one at a time
A supplier raised the price of salmon eleven percent. A server voids twice the average. Each notice arrives with the number and the next sensible step.
The people asking for your attention
Two founders who have run kitchens, an engineer who has run data teams, and a finance lead who has audited both.
- Amara OkonkwoCo-founder and chief executive, former restaurateur
- Daniel VossCo-founder and chief technology officer, ex-payments
- Priyanka DesaiHead of data science, formerly hospitality analytics
- Leo BrennanFinance lead, former restaurant group controller
Where the seed round takes us
The plan below is what we told our last three advisors, and what we would like to be held to.
- First quarter
Open the supplier network
Connect invoices from the twenty largest foodservice distributors so that cost data arrives with no scanning at all.
- Second quarter
Launch multi-location groups
Give restaurant groups one dashboard across ten kitchens, with roll-ups their accountants will accept without a call.
- Third quarter
Ship the ordering assistant
Suggest tomorrow's order from forecast covers and current stock, and send it to the supplier when the chef approves.
- Fourth quarter
Reach twenty-five hundred customers
Hire a field team in five cities and add partner channels with the two largest point-of-sale providers.
Owners who write before they are asked
“I found out my signature pasta lost me two dollars a plate. Raising the price by a dollar fifty made no difference to how often it was ordered.”
“Cardinal paid for itself in the first month through the schedule alone. My general manager now opens the app before she opens the walk-in.”
“I have used three restaurant systems over twenty years. This is the first that talks to me like a friend who happens to be good with numbers.”
What investors ask in the first meeting
What is the market?
There are roughly 600,000 independent restaurants in the United States, and fewer than five percent use any analytics tool beyond their point-of-sale report.
How do you make money?
Customers pay a monthly subscription of 129 dollars per location, with higher tiers for groups and an ordering assistant that earns a small supplier fee.
What stops a point-of-sale vendor copying you?
Point-of-sale providers see sales, not invoices or payroll. We combine all three, and the margin data we collect compounds with every kitchen we add.
How will you use the seed round?
Roughly half goes to engineering and data science, a third to a field sales team and the rest to customer success and supplier integrations.
Who else has invested so far?
Two hospitality-focused angels and a small fund that backs restaurant operators. We share the full list with qualified investors in the data room.
Back the team that is putting numbers in every kitchen.
Request the deck, ask for a customer reference, or book an hour in a real restaurant to watch the morning report arrive.
Ask for the pitch deck and data room
Share who you are and what you back. Amara replies to every investor herself, usually within one working day.