Problem

Kaso addresses the outdated, fragmented food-supply chain serving restaurants in the Middle East and North Africa. Restaurant purchasing is often handled through manual, inefficient interactions with multiple suppliers, creating administrative work, poor transparency, inconsistent pricing, and excess food waste. The economics are especially painful for independent restaurants: Y Combinator says they pay approximately 12% more than chains for the same supplies because they lack collective buying power.

The core use case is a restaurant or purchasing team consolidating procurement across suppliers and branches, then using aggregated demand to obtain better pricing while reducing over-ordering and manual effort. This targets both the direct cost of ingredients and the indirect cost of staff time, inventory errors, and waste.

Product / Service

Kaso is a B2B food-procurement marketplace and AI-powered operating platform connecting restaurants with food suppliers. Its AI agents aggregate restaurant demand and negotiate chain-level pricing; restaurants can order from suppliers in one place, standardize purchasing across branches, access discounts or cashback, and obtain invoice financing or extended payment terms. Suppliers receive a digital channel for capturing orders, finding restaurant buyers, automating sales administration, and syncing clean orders into their ERP systems.

The platform is delivered through web and mobile workflows and integrates with restaurant-management infrastructure. For example, its Foodics integration synchronizes inventory updates and purchase-order data, reducing manual ordering and improving inventory accuracy. Kaso’s site reports more than 30% time saved in restaurant ordering, while the Foodics partnership reported a 65% reduction in time spent manually placing orders and an 8% reduction in food waste. The value proposition is therefore lower procurement cost and waste for restaurants, alongside more efficient revenue generation and faster payment for suppliers.

Market

Kaso competes in B2B foodservice procurement, restaurant-supply-chain digitization, and the adjacent restaurant fintech market in MENA. Its competitive set includes procurement and inventory platforms such as Supy and GoFrugal, as well as broader restaurant-management platforms such as Foodics that touch inventory, purchasing, and operations. Foodics is also a Kaso integration partner, so it is better viewed as an adjacent platform and distribution channel than as a straightforward direct rival. Kaso’s differentiation is the combination of marketplace connectivity, collective purchasing, AI-enabled procurement, and embedded payments or credit.

Kaso is an operating, commercial-stage company rather than an apparent pre-launch venture. Its current website claims more than 2,000 suppliers, 5,000 restaurants, and 5 million orders processed across MENA; the company reported more than 5,000 partners in Saudi Arabia and the UAE in 2023, including brands such as Burger King, Buffalo Wild Wings, Tim Hortons, Caribou Coffee, and Chili’s. It raised a $10.5 million seed round in 2023, and Y Combinator lists it as active, founded in 2021 and part of Winter 2022. Public sources reviewed do not disclose revenue or profitability, so the scale of monetization remains unclear.