We raised $1.1M to force restaurants to win online.

And we're just getting started.

We started Pleny with one observation nobody in the industry wanted to say out loud: independent restaurants are losing orders every single day not because their food is bad, but because their online presence is broken. A chef who trained for a decade, recipes passed down through generations invisible on delivery apps because their photos look like they were taken on a broken Nokia. Ranked below a competitor who opened last month but figured out the listing game.

Today, we're announcing $1.1 million in funding led by Alliance DAO, with participation from Polygon Ventures, LongHashX Ventures, Gnosis Ventures, and angels who believe what we believe: that the most talented restaurants in the world are being robbed of their customers by platforms they have no choice but to depend on.

Why “force” is the right word

Every marketing solution that has ever targeted independent restaurants has failed them the same way: hand the owner a toolkit and say “figure it out.” Learn the ads platform. Manage your Google Business Profile. Track competitors. Run promotions. All of this while running a kitchen for 14 hours a day.

The result is predictable. Owners try for two weeks, get overwhelmed, give up, and go back to hoping the delivery apps send them orders. The platforms take 30%. A competitor three doors down figures out the game and pulls their customers.

We're not building another toolkit. We're building an intelligence system that does everything automatically so that talented restaurants cannot stay invisible no matter how little time the owner has.

What we're actually building

The average restaurant on a delivery platform is flying blind. They don't know how they rank, which of their photos are killing conversion, what offer their nearest competitor launched this morning, or which dish needs a better description to beat the restaurant two streets away. We know. And we tell them every week, automatically, in plain language, with a specific action attached.

We started with food photo enhancement the most visible, immediate problem. A restaurant sends us a phone photo, we return an editorial-grade image within 24 hours that competes with chains spending huge budgets on professional photography. But photos were always the entry point, never the destination.

The real product is a growth system that watches everything that matters about a restaurant's online presence listing health, Google Business Profile, competitor moves, review trajectory, ad strategy and fixes what's broken before the owner even knows it's broken.

Why now

Delivery platforms are starting to open up their developer APIs. For the first time, a third-party product can see what the platforms see real-time listing data, menu intelligence, competitive pricing, coupon activity. We can tell a restaurant owner that their competitor added three photos last Tuesday and jumped two positions in search. That their top dish has no photo while four nearby restaurants do. Exactly which discount structure is working for their category right now.

This data was locked. Deliberately, by design, by platforms that understood information asymmetry was their moat. That moat just cracked open and we are the first product built specifically to exploit it for the benefit of the restaurants, not the platforms.

What this funding changes

This isn't lifestyle capital. This is war capital. Every dollar goes into building faster, reaching more restaurants, and making the intelligence system so automatic that a restaurant owner who signs up on Monday has a measurably better listing by Friday without doing a single thing themselves. We are expanding beyond photos into full listing intelligence, review management, competitor monitoring, and ad strategy all automated, all running in the background while the owner focuses on their kitchen.

The platforms will not do this for restaurants. They benefit from restaurants being confused and dependent. We are building the counterweight the intelligence layer between the restaurant and the platform that ensures the restaurant always knows what's happening and never has to figure it out alone.

To the restaurants who trusted us early: this funding is your validation too. You sent us your worst phone photos and got back images that competed with restaurants spending ten times what you spend. You are the reason this round happened.

To the restaurants we haven't reached yet: we are coming. And when we do, you won't have to do a thing except keep making the food you're already proud of. We'll handle everything else.