Restaurants were hit hard during the pandemic and the sector needs technology more than ever to grow. The industry is seeing consolidation, especially on the technology side where businesses are finding common ground to join forces in order to save money and reach more profitability.
Meal Ticket and MarketMan fit this mold. On Wednesday, the two companies said they are merging to combine their complementary software products. The deal is backed by an over $100 million investment from PSG. PSG has been invested in Meal Ticket since December 2020.
Meal Ticket offers software and data to foodservice distributors. MarketMan’s technology allows restaurants to manage inventory and orders, monitor purchasing spend and food costs, and analyze back-of-the-house operations to save them time and drive greater profitability.
The restaurant sector is capital and time intensive. Any software system that will let operators run their businesses more efficiently from one place will be a plus in their book. This ranges from online ordering to managing inventory.
“Restaurants and foodservice businesses are operationally complex, low-margin businesses with significant amounts of individual transactions and complex data needs,” Wink Jones, CEO of Meal Ticket, tells Mergers & Acquisitions. “The pandemic and related labor challenges have put enormous additional strain on the individual businesses in this very large ecosystem – and modern solutions like MarketMan and Meal Ticket that help analyze, understand, control and lower costs structures can have outsize impacts on their success.”
Restaurant technology is poised for growth and will see more deals ahead.
— Demitri Diakantonis
