Restorando, a startup offering reservation tools to restaurants in Latin America, is announcing that it has raised $13.3 million in Series B funding.
The round was led by Flybridge Capital Partners, with participation from previous investors Emergence Capital Partners, Kaszek Ventures, Atomico and Storm Ventures. Flybridge’s Jon Karlen is joining Restorando’s board of directors.
“With thousands of restaurants and more than 2 million diners now using the platform, [Restorando] has quickly established itself as the dominant player in the market,” Karlen said in the funding press release.
CEO Frank Martin told me that Restorando was designed to bring the OpenTable reservation model to Latin America. (OpenTable itself is only available in a couple of Latin American countries.) It was founded in 2011 and is headquartered in Buenos Aires, and it offers free service for restaurant-goers that doesn’t require any hardware installation for the restaurants. Restorando says it’s now available in nine major cities in Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Colombia.
I asked how building this kind of business in Latin America differs from doing so in the U.S., and Martin said he was surprised by the importance of mobile, which is the source of 35 percent of Restorando’s reservations. More broadly, he said, “Every country is different — especially in Brazil. You have to take Brazil as a continent, and every city in Brazil has a different culture, different accents, different traditions.
“However, when it comes to technology,” he added, “the people follow mostly the same patterns, because it’s about convenience. It’s about being able to make a reservation or a transaction in 20 seconds, and when you get to the restaurant your reservation is there. The technology ends up shaping the culture in the same way.”
Restorando has now raised a total of $17 million.
