When Brendan and I started Hostie two years ago, it came from a very real restaurant problem. At my restaurant, Back to Back in San Francisco, I spent countless nights listening to the phone ring while we tried to take care of the guests standing right in front of us. Every missed call could have been a reservation, a private event inquiry, a takeout order, or a future regular. As a restaurant owner, I was being asked to manage more and more guest communication across more channels, often without more staff or time. We believed there had to be a better way to support restaurant teams without taking away what makes hospitality special in the first place.

That idea became Hostie.

Today, I’m excited to share that Hostie has raised $12M in Series A funding led by Obvious Ventures, with participation from Gradient, Scribble Ventures, Burst Capital, Behind Genius Ventures, and a group of restaurant operators and advisors who deeply understand hospitality. We’re also fortunate to be supported by industry leaders including Thomas Layton, former CEO at OpenTable, Mike Dodson, former SVP of Sales at OpenTable and current Resy board member, and Mike Stoppelman, former VP of Engineering at Yelp.

Most importantly, this milestone allows us to continue investing in restaurants.

Since we started, hundreds of restaurants across the country have trusted Hostie with an important part of their guest experience, including Flour + Water Hospitality Group, Riviera Dining Group, Bacchus Management Group, Cactus Club Cafe, Cunningham Restaurant Group, Merchants Hospitality, State Bird Provisions, Wayfare Tavern, Mirra, The Progress, and many more. Over the last two years, we’ve expanded from handling calls and texts to supporting reservations, takeout, private event inquiries, and broader guest communication workflows for independent restaurants, hospitality groups, and enterprise restaurant brands. Our goal remains the same: helping restaurant teams stay focused on hospitality instead of constantly managing incoming requests.

To date, Hostie has handled more than 2 million guest conversations and 24 million messages, booked over 400,000 covers, and supported more than 50,000 private event inquiries, and we’re just getting started. This next chapter allows us to continue investing in better tools, stronger onboarding and support, deeper integrations, and new products for restaurants, including direct takeout ordering capabilities and expanded partnership opportunities across hospitality technology.

We’re also continuing to invest in the team behind Hostie. Recently, we welcomed Jeff Jones as Head of Sales, formerly at OpenTable, and Hayley Foppiani as Head of Marketing, formerly at BentoBox, both longtime hospitality and restaurant technology leaders, as we continue building for operators across the country.

One of the most meaningful parts of this raise is the people behind it. We’re incredibly grateful to Kahini Shah and James Joaquin at Obvious Ventures for leading this round, along with Andrew Brackin at Gradient, Stu Smith, Elizabeth Weil, and Kevin Weil at Scribble Ventures, Mike Ghaffary at Burst Capital, Paige Doherty at Behind Genius Ventures, and the restaurant operators and advisors supporting us along the way, including Tim Stannard from Bacchus Management Group and Stuart Brioza, Nicole Krasinski, and Elizabeth DePalmer from Atomic Workshop.

Hospitality remains at the center of everything we build. Our goal has always been to create technology that supports restaurant teams, not replaces them, and helps operators stay focused on taking care of guests. We’re grateful to every restaurant that has trusted us so far and excited for what this next chapter means for the industry.

Randall Hom
Co-Founder & CEO, Hostie
Co-Owner, Back to Back Restaurant