Best Startup
Feed It Back – the company whose technology and services are used by cafes, bars and restaurants to rate customer experience has been given its own vote of confidence – a multi-million-pound investment. A majority holding has been acquired by telecoms entrepreneur James Palmer, for an undisclosed sum. The major new injection of capital will be reinvested into the company’s UK growth through an expanded team and the creation of new customer products and services.
With a background in running their own cocktail bar and restaurant, husband-and-wife team Carlo and Julia Platia founded Feed It Back in 2008. The company is now the largest and fastest growing UK customer experience dashboard for hospitality operators – even recording growth in 2020 during the pandemic lockdown. With high street chains such as Las Iguanas, Fridays, Marco Pierre White, GBK, Tenpin and Parkdean Resorts as customers, the hospitality focused technology company captures millions of customer surveys and reviews every year.
Feed It Back uses hospitality venues’ own assessment criteria and gathers data that highlights how customers feel about their business. Its dashboard shows in detail how brands are performing across their estate, by region and by venue. The dashboard highlights what customers like and where they think improvements can be made, helping management ensure return visits and word-of-mouth endorsements.
Management team remains in place
Following the injection of new funds, the Platias retain a minority shareholding in the company, and Carlo Platia remains CEO atop an unchanged management team. He will also join the board of a newly formed holding company.
“With the hospitality industry now planning to reopen its doors in the coming weeks it will be more important than ever to monitor and engage with customers to ensure a great experience,” commented Carlo Platia. “This new investment is perfectly timed to allow us to double the size of our software development team and create more new products and services that help better inform our growing UK customer base.”
“Feed It Back is poised to capture a much larger portion of the rapidly growing customer feedback market in the hospitality sector,” agrees James Palmer, who becomes Executive Chairman following his injection of funds. “Now on a very solid financial footing, Feed It Back and its excellent management team can take a fast-growing business and supercharge it into a dominant position in the UK market. It also opens the prospect of future expansion opportunities overseas. It’s a great UK tech success story – and that story is only just beginning.”
