Pandemic Effects on Funding, Growth and People – Plus Predictions for 2024

Full Course’s Founder and CEO Lauren Fernandez and Chief People + Culture Officer Lissa Bowen provide perspectives on the state of the restaurant industry with a particular focus on capital spend, pent-up deal flow, and labor challenges. 

Shortage of Capital for Restaurant Technology As we marched into 2023, interest rates and uncertain economic conditions continued to impact the withdrawal capital from restaurant technology investments. Investments in venture capital had a massive retreat in 2023, hitting the technology sector very hard. As we look back, there was a long-overdue flood of tech investment into our industry, largely as the result of the boon of food delivery during the pandemic.

As delivery dropped back down to more normal levels, we saw a number of delivery start-ups and tech dying on the vine. However, our industry still is an attractive space for well-suited technologies, improving efficiencies at every level of the restaurant from inventory to customer…