NEW YORK — PreciTaste, a Vision AI platform and industry leader in operational optimization, has raised $24 million in Series A to continue its mission to become the standard for digital food AI management in fast casual and QSR kitchens. Developed to maximize efficiency, enhance customer experience, and reduce food waste, the largest food chains apply PreciTaste to combat the industry’s labor, quality, and sustainability challenges.
PreciTaste adapts to each operation by observing crews, then generates AI agents through data to assist them live onsite. Flexible software applications enable use cases like demand-based cooking and ingredient preparation, real-time task management, or order accuracy. With demand-based forecasts, up to 40% of kitchen tasks are consolidated. With order accuracy guidance, customers are served five times faster.
“PreciTaste’s established platform is changing the way food chains operate, and can scale existing and new food concepts,” says PreciTaste Co-Founder and CEO, Dr. Ingo Stork. “Our technology also zeroes in on food waste.” This is vital to Stork’s mission given that, if food waste was a country, it would be the third largest global CO2 emitter (United Nations FAO).
PreciTaste’s Series A is led by existing investor Melitas Ventures, a fund that invests in innovative early-stage food and beverage companies, and Cleveland Avenue, a mission-driven investor in food, beverage, and technology companies. Additional investors include Enlightened Hospitality Investments (EHI), the growth equity fund co-founded by Danny Meyer, the Founder of Union Square Hospitality Group and Shake Shack, and Monogram Capital Partners, a leading consumer-focused growth fund with investments including Chewy.com, Oatly, and Foxtrot.
Dr. Mingu Lee, Managing Partner of Cleveland Avenue, says, “PreciTaste has created an innovative solution for the most critical kitchen management problems. This technology is transformative and is the advantage every kitchen needs to drive sales and profit.”
With PreciTaste’s Virtual Baker® already managing in-store baking processes in Europe’s largest grocery retailer, the company had the infrastructure to expand fast casual and QSR roll-outs in 2020 following the pandemic-spurred digital focus. With 1,500+ food AI systems deployed since, PreciTaste has evolved with a proprietary offline-first AIOS operating system and TasteOS Cloud-based reporting platform.
Powered by Intel Solutions, leveraging the OpenVINO toolkit, PreciTaste’s platform accelerates deployment of intelligent devices and analytics, making its technology economical, easily adoptable, and swiftly executable. PreciTaste’s partnership with Franke Foodservice Systems, Inc., a leader in implementing kitchen and equipment improvement campaigns for major chains, provides further insights to consider during implementation.
“The technology pays for itself through food waste savings alone and is highly scalable,” says Alex Malamatinas, Founder & Managing Partner of Melitas Ventures. “We invest in companies that transform how consumers eat and drink. Through the combination of innovation, infrastructure, and partnerships, PreciTaste is a pioneer in foodservice operations.”
PreciTaste
Developed by engineers trained at TUM, MIT, IIT, NASA, and other leading institutions, PreciTaste, an offline-first, in-store food software platform, sets the standard for digital food AI management. With $24 million in Series A growth funding, PreciTaste is fast-tracking deployments of its proprietary Vision AI technology protected by 40+ patents, which optimizes operations, leading to labor efficiency, sales growth, and sustainability. It works on Edge Devices, is Cloud and Internet-independent, and data privacy compliant. Series A is led by Melitas Ventures and Cleveland Avenue, and includes Enlightened Hospitality Investments (EHI) and Monogram Capital Partners. Follow PreciTaste on LinkedIn and Twitter.