Philly-based XtraChef raises $7.5M to create “premiere back-of-house” operations platform for restaurants

Center City-based xtraCHEF, a 25-person, three-year-old company whose “restaurant management platform” includes a set of popular apps designed to help automate restaurant management, has raised its first $7.5 million in venture capital investment, boss Andy Schwartz told workers and friends in a blog post today.

Lead investor is Radnor-based MVP Capital Partners, which is also an owner of local food businesses including Spread Bagelry, the Saxby coffee business and Workhorse Brewing. Other new xtraChef investors include ValueStream Ventures and Laconia Capital Group, both of New York.

Co-founders are Schwartz and Bhavik Patel, who worked together at the Schwartz family business, MTS Software Solutions, a corporate enterprise software apps integrator based in Moorestown. They credit Philly chef Chaz Brown (Soul of the Space) with helping see the need for mobile, cloud, multi-tenant, optical-carrier recognition, machine learning and other familiar corporate data applications in the highly decentralized food-service industry.

Starting in 2016, xtraCHEF, based in the Biddle building at 1217 Sansom, at first offered digital invoices and vendor-data integration into restaurant and corporate accounting systems. It has expanded to add food cost analytics, budgeting and purchasing and other restaurant financial variables. The platform’s "rapid growth and broad user adoption” helped attract MVP Capital, said president Rob Brown in a statement.

Since last fall xtraCHEF has added a Chicago office and hired sales, product development, engineering and finance staff. The firm says its product catalog now includes millions of industry products, giving users broad pricing information and access.

Schwartz plans to use the new money to hire more people and accelerate building “the premiere back-of-house business intelligence and operations platform in the industry," giving owners “data to drive profitability.”

xtraChef says its clients include Chef José Andrés, the &pizza chain, Dos Toros Taqueria, TGI Fridays and Dairy Queen, plus the CookNSolo restaurant group led by Philadelphia-based Michael Solomonov.