Zak

Zak is a Brazil-based technology company serving the food service market with an all-in-one restaurant management platform. The product provides restaurant operators with a consolidated view of their operations, bundling point-of-sale, back-office management tools and payment processing for both offline and online channels. It integrates with third-party food delivery aggregators including iFood, Uber Eats and Rappi, allowing restaurants to manage in-house and marketplace orders through a single system.

The company emerged from Mimic, a dark-kitchen-as-a-service business founded in Brazil in 2018 by childhood friends David Grandes and Andres Andrade, both from Ecuador, which specialized in producing food at scale for online sales channels. After observing restaurants struggling to digitize during the pandemic, the founders pivoted the business into Zak. Grandes and Andrade serve as co-founders and co-CEOs; Marina Lima is chief revenue officer. As of late 2021 the company had 162 employees and stated an intention to double headcount by the end of 2022, and to add customer relationship management and marketing automation capabilities.

Founding story

David Grandes and Andres Andrade, childhood friends originally from Ecuador, founded Mimic in Brazil in 2018 as a dark kitchen-as-a-service operation focused on producing food at scale for online sales channels. As food operators themselves, they saw restaurants struggling to digitize during the pandemic and repositioned the company as Zak, a management and financial tools provider for the food service sector.

Business model

Zak sells software and payment services to restaurants, positioning its management platform at zero fixed cost to the operator and generating revenue from the financial and transaction flows it processes. The company has described an intent to become an embedded finance provider, using its visibility into restaurant financial flows to offer digital wallets, invoicing and working capital to restaurants that are often declined for bank loans.

Software platform offered at zero fixed cost to restaurants, with monetization through payment processing and planned financial services such as wallets, invoicing and lending.

Traction

As of November 2021 the company reported more than 300 restaurant customers across São Paulo, revenue growth of four times over the prior year, approximately $100 million in payments processed monthly, and an expectation of more than $350 million in monthly payment volume within twelve months.

Latest developments

In November 2021 Zak announced $15 million in Series A funding led by Tiger Global Management, with participation from Valor Capital Group, Monashees, Base 10 and Canary, to fund geographic expansion in Brazil, product additions including CRM and marketing automation, and preparation for entry into Mexico.