Czech Choice Bets on AI and European Expansion After Scaling Restaurant SaaS Across CEE

• Czech B2B SaaS Choice raised its USD 7.1M Series A round to expand restaurant technology across Europe
• The platform evolved into an operating system combining ordering, payments, loyalty, and customer data
• Its new AI tools improve restaurant decisions, marketing, and operational efficiency
• Plans include Western European expansion, starting with Portugal

This March, the well-known Prague-based B2B SaaS startup Choice raised USD 7.1M in Series A funding to accelerate its European expansion and further develop AI-powered tools for restaurant operators. The round was led by Alea Capital Partners, joined by Smartlink, as well as the startup’s long-stranding supporters Reflex Capital  (invested in Keboola, among others) and J&T Ventures. The investment supports Choice’s product development, AI-integrated modules, and expansion of sales and customer support teams in Western European markets.

From Hotel SaaS Experience to Restaurant Technology

Choice was founded in 2020 by seasoned entrepreneur Alex Ilyash, who previously built DAVINCI, a B2B SaaS platform serving hotels across Europe. When Choice was raising its previous USD 2.5M Seed round in 2024, the company was focused on becoming a one-stop shop for restaurants’ front-office operations, covering digital ordering, QR payments, reservations, loyalty programs, and marketplace integrations.

‘What motivated us to invest in Choice – mainly experienced founder, his ability to expand and scale across Europe, build efficient teams and last but not least the product vision implementing AI features. The combination of above persuaded us that this is the key mix for the future startup success,’ J&T Ventures’ partner Zuzana Ondrejová tells ITKeyMedia.

Building a Unified Restaurant Operating System

Since then, Choice has evolved from a collection of restaurant tools into a broader operating system for independent and multi-location restaurants. Today, the platform combines ordering, payments, reservations, customer data, loyalty programs, and integrations with major delivery marketplaces, allowing restaurants to manage multiple digital channels from one system.

Choice’s main focus during the past two years was proving that it can scale across significantly different European markets. According to the team, this journey strengthened Choice’s product, expanded its customer base, and built a more efficient operating model, —.because restaurant technology requires both a strong product and deep understanding of local markets. This experience naturally adds to the team’s confidence as Choice moves into the next stage of European expansion.

Solving Restaurant Fragmentation Through Technology

Raising its previous round, the company identified a key challenge in the restaurant industry: while many POS systems digitised internal operations, restaurants still lacked effective tools for managing direct relationships with customers. The essential problem is fragmentation: restaurants use many different tools that don’t communicate with each other. Choice, instead, creates a more straightforward way to manage operations, marketing, and customer relationships in one place.

The platform currently reports more than 30,000 registered restaurants, including over 7,000 paying customers across nine CEE markets. The company processes approximately 1.5 million monthly orders, representing around EUR 35M in monthly gross merchandise value.

Turning Restaurant Data Into Actionable Intelligence

The Choice team believes that ownership of customer data will become increasingly important as restaurants look for alternatives to third-party platforms. While marketplaces provide restaurants with access to customers, they also limit direct relationships and charge commissions.

Importantly, customer data obtained through such communication is not the advantage here. The Choice team believes that the advantage is turning this data into actions that improve restaurant performance. Restaurants don’t need more dashboards, they need better decisions and actions.

One practical application is customer retention: many independent restaurants have large amounts of customer data but lack the resources to analyse it and create targeted campaigns. Choice believes AI can help identify customers who are likely to return, recommend marketing actions, and automate parts of customer engagement.

Investors Back AI-Powered Restaurant Growth

‘By giving restaurants greater control over digital ordering, additional revenue generation, and a more balanced relationship with delivery platforms, Choice App helps operators protect profitability while improving the end-customer experience,’  Alea Capital Partners’ founding partner Rui Escaleira comments.

The new funding allows Choice to accelerate development of its AI-powered features designed to help restaurants automate marketing, analyse customer behaviour, and improve operational decisions. The team sees AI not as a path to transition from traditional software tools toward an intelligent operating system. For Choice, one of the biggest opportunities is moving from analytics toward intelligence — a future where restaurant owners no longer need to become data analysts, but have a possibility to ask direct questions about their business and get actionable answers immediately.

‘We still believe in the founding and management team, their growth is amazing so we still want to be part of that. Also, we believe that even though they are primarily a software company, they cannot be as easily disrupted by AI, as is the case with many SaaSes,’ Reflex Capital’s partner Michal Táborský shares.

Expanding From CEE Foundations Into Western Europe

Choice’s previous funding round supported expansion into new CEE markets, including Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Slovakia, and Ukraine. The company now plans to use this CEE experience as a foundation for expansion into Western Europe. Even though Europe is a complex market and every country has different regulations, languages, and customer habits, the underlying problems are largely similar. Restaurants everywhere naturally want stronger customer relationships, lower dependence on intermediaries, and better tools to run their businesses.

‘We understand the fragmentation of the European restaurant market and the need for localisation. But we see this as a competitive advantage. We know how to scale in Europe. By combining strong local sales teams, efficient capital deployment from our CEE base, and AI-driven product innovation, we are confident we can win market by market,’ Mr Ilyash explains.

The first new market planned under the Series A expansion strategy is Portugal, followed by Spain and Italy, with France, Germany, and the Netherlands planned for later stages. The company believes that building repeatable processes will make future market entries more efficient. As such, the goal is to build a model where every new market becomes easier because we learn from the previous ones.

By combining operational software, customer data, and AI-powered tools, Choice is poised to give restaurants more control over their businesses while reducing dependence on fragmented digital channels. The startup’s CEE foundation and growing ambitions in Western Europe position the company as a European player in the future of restaurant technology. The next stage will test whether a company built in the fragmented European restaurant market can turn local market knowledge into a scalable technology platform.