A Berlin-based startup called Choice just closed a $7.1 million Series A round, and it’s betting that restaurants are tired of handing over their margins to third-party delivery platforms. The company builds white-label ordering technology that lets restaurants own the customer relationship — and the data — when people order food online.
The round was led by Vorwerk Ventures, with participation from Delivery Hero co-founder Lukasz Gadowski and existing investors including Atlantic Labs and Founders Foundation, according to The Next Web.
The Commission Problem That Won’t Go Away
Here’s the tension at the center of restaurant tech right now. Platforms like Uber Eats, Deliveroo, and DoorDash bring volume. But they also charge commissions that can run 15% to 30% per order. For restaurants already operating on razor-thin margins — typically 3% to 9% — that math is brutal.
Choice’s pitch is straightforward. It provides restaurants with their own branded ordering channels: websites, apps, and integrations that plug into existing point-of-sale systems. No middleman taking a cut of every transaction. The startup charges a SaaS fee instead, which means restaurants pay a predictable monthly cost rather than hemorrhaging revenue on every delivery.
This isn’t a new idea. Companies like Olo, ChowNow, and Flipdish have been working variations of the same model for years. But Choice is positioning itself specifically for the European market, where aggregator dominance varies by country and independent restaurants still make up a massive share of the industry.
And the timing matters. Post-pandemic, restaurants that rushed onto third-party platforms are now reckoning with the long-term cost. Many discovered they’d built dependency on channels that erode profitability.
What Choice Actually Does
The product itself covers online ordering, table reservations, and customer engagement tools. Think of it as a tech layer that sits between the restaurant and its customers, except the restaurant keeps control. Choice handles the digital infrastructure — ordering flows, payment processing, menu management — so that even a single-location restaurant can offer a polished direct-ordering experience.
According to Choice’s own materials and coverage from TNW, the company already works with thousands of restaurants across Europe. The new funding will go toward product development and geographic expansion.
CEO and co-founder Mohamed Ghali has framed the company’s mission around giving restaurants independence from aggregators. Not eliminating them entirely — most operators will still list on Uber Eats for discovery — but reducing reliance on those platforms for repeat customers. The logic: once someone has ordered from your restaurant, why pay a 25% commission for them to do it again through a third party?
That logic resonates. Direct ordering is where the margin recovery happens.
But execution is everything. The challenge for any white-label ordering provider is convincing restaurants that the upfront effort of driving customers to their own channels is worth it. Aggregators spend billions on marketing. A single restaurant with a branded app doesn’t have that firepower.
Choice’s answer seems to involve CRM-style tools — loyalty programs, targeted promotions, customer data analytics — that help restaurants market to their existing base. It’s the playbook that Shopify ran against Amazon in e-commerce: you won’t outspend the giant, but you can own your customer relationship and build something more sustainable.
The Shopify analogy comes up often in restaurant tech circles. Sometimes too often. The comparison has limits. Restaurants face operational complexity — kitchen capacity, delivery logistics, perishable inventory — that online retailers don’t. Still, the underlying principle holds. Ownership of the customer channel changes the economics.
Where This Fits in a Crowded Market
Restaurant technology has attracted enormous investment over the past five years. Toast went public. Square expanded aggressively into food service. Olo powers ordering for major chains across the U.S. In Europe, companies like Flipdish (Ireland) and Sides (also Berlin) are chasing similar opportunities.
So Choice enters a competitive field. Its $7.1 million raise is modest compared to some peers, but Series A rounds in European SaaS often are. What matters now is whether the product can differentiate on execution — speed of integration, reliability, and the quality of tools that actually drive repeat direct orders.
Vorwerk Ventures leading the round adds credibility. The firm, connected to the Vorwerk Group (the company behind Thermomix), has a track record in consumer and food-adjacent technology investments.
For restaurant operators watching this space, the takeaway is practical. The tools for reclaiming direct customer relationships exist and are getting better. The question isn’t whether to invest in owned ordering channels. It’s which provider can deliver results without adding operational headaches.
$7.1 million won’t reshape the industry overnight. But it’s enough to prove whether Choice’s model can scale across fragmented European markets where independent restaurants still dominate — and where the appetite for alternatives to aggregator dependency is only growing.
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