Innovorder, a Paris-based scale-up specialising in the digitalisation of the restaurant industry, has raised €20 million in a funding round to accelerate its “AI-first” transformation.
The round was led by UL Invest, the family office of tech entrepreneur Laurent Useldinger. This deal combines a capital increase and the buyout of shares from historical investors. Evolem, a Lyon-based family office and investor since 2019, remains a shareholder.
Jérôme Varnier, CEO and co-founder of Innovorder, explained, “In eight years, we have grown from a startup to a profitable scale-up and leader in our markets. With UL Invest, we are giving ourselves the means to become the European champion of restaurant digitalisation. Our ambition is clear: to make Innovorder the benchmark scale-up in European restech, by combining organic growth, targeted acquisitions, and geographic expansion.”
Founded in 2014 by Varnier, Romain Melloul, and Olivier Loverde, Innovorder is a French software publisher for front-office digitalisation in restaurants. The company states that its all-in-one SaaS platform covers all the operational needs of a point of sale: order taking (POS, kiosks, online ordering, QR code), payment (POS coupled with its proprietary Innovorder Pay solution), kitchen production (KDS), business management (back-office, Atlas AI reporting), and customer loyalty.
The company caters to both commercial and contract catering. The former includes quick-service restaurants, bakeries, coffee shops, food courts, transport catering (stations, airports, trains, cruises, etc.), and contract catering includes services for companies, schools and universities, hospitals, and healthcare groups.
The French scale-up states that the €22 billion European contract catering market is still mostly dominated by outdated IT systems. Innovorder claims to be the only prominent cloud-native company in this space.
It equips the ten largest contract catering players in France (including Sodexo, Elior, Compass, and API Restauration) as well as major commercial catering brands such as La Croissanterie and Amorino.
The company has also announced an “ambitious” strategy for external growth across Europe. Currently active in France, Morocco, Spain, and Italy, Innovorder plans to achieve pan-European leadership by 2030, encompassing all consumption methods (on-site, delivery, takeaway, drive-thru) and market sectors (commercial, contract, and leisure catering).
To accomplish this, the company has brought in several notable entrepreneurs and co-investors, who are also participating in its governance, such as Jalel Souissi, co-founder and former co-CEO of Acrelec and GemTech Investors, an investment structure founded by Stéphane Epin (former partner at European private equity fund Astorg).
Laurent Useldinger, founder of UL Invest, said, “Innovorder brings together everything we look for at UL Invest: an exceptional founding team, a differentiating product, leadership positions in markets undergoing full digitalisation, and existing profitability. We are proud to support Jérôme, Romain, and Olivier in this new phase, and to provide them with our experience in SaaS scaling and our network of co-investing entrepreneurs to make Innovorder a European champion.”
With this funding, the company also aims to accelerate its “AI-first” transformation, initiated 18 months ago. Innovorder has structured a dedicated team and deployed its first AI agents into production for its clients.
At this strategy’s core lies its proprietary solution called Atlas. The company notes that with its fleet of AI agents, it provides European restaurateurs with a new generation of tools capable of automating daily operations, while integrating with their existing software ecosystem.
Innovorder reports that it has been profitable since 2024, with a 40% annual organic growth rate, and anticipates reaching €15 million in revenue by 2026.
Read the orginal article: https://www.eu-startups.com/2026/06/profitable-french-scale-up-innovorder-raises-e20-million-to-accelerate-ai-first-restaurant-digitalisation/
