PLEASANTON — Cheetah, a technology supply chain company operating a wholesale food and restaurant supplies marketplace, has closed a Series C Round of financing totaling $60 million co-led by Manna Tree and Sator Grove Holdings. They were joined by Lineage Logistics, Grupo Nutresa, Eclipse Ventures, and Hanaco Growth Ventures.
The interest in this growth round underscores the need and demand for providing tech-enabled services and support to independent restaurants and food entrepreneurs, who have been struggling during the pandemic. These independent restaurants, when combined, make up the largest part of the foodservice industry in the United States.
Since its inception in 2015, Cheetah has grown exponentially to service thousands of restaurants through their innovative, tech-enabled, platform that is providing wholesale food buyers with price and sourcing transparency, and best-in-class customer service. With independent restaurants getting hit the hardest through the pandemic, there has never been a more critical time for them to have honest partners with transparent pricing. Through the new Manna Tree partnership, Cheetah will work with the private equity firm’s deep network, which includes restaurant groups and operators, real estate relationships, and management consultants, to accelerate Cheetah’s plans to enter new markets in addition to helping the emerging supply chain leader grow further via M&A.
“Operating a restaurant is hard enough without suppliers changing pricing and products on you constantly and without you knowing. We started Cheetah to provide a fair and honest e-commerce platform for restaurants who demand more transparency and efficiency from their suppliers and partners. Transparency, enabled by our technology, allows for better decision making, giving our restaurant customers the opportunity for enhanced profitability and the agency to choose vendors that are making our world a healthier and more sustainable place.” explained Na’ama Moran, Co-Founder and CEO of Cheetah, who led the company through turbulent market changes during the pandemic. “We joined forces with Manna Tree because their mission to improve human health through nutrition is perfectly aligned with our own mission.”
“Cheetah is committed to bringing localized and nutritious food ingredients to consumers via restaurants; the largest channel for food consumption in the United States” said Pam Shepherd, Managing Director, Manna Tree. “As a firm, we see great potential to improve human health across the food supply chain, especially with an industry trailblazer like Cheetah. They are poised to upend the existing wholesale food marketplace, bringing greater transparency and greater levels of service to foodservice distribution, a $300 billion-plus industry historically lacking in innovation.”
“We were immediately impressed with the culture and the people at Cheetah,” added Paul Buser, Co-Founder and Co-CEO, Sator Grove Holdings. “Our mission is to find and help build the best companies in the world, and to make a positive impact on humankind through our work. The management team at Cheetah has shown they have the ability to make tough decisions in challenging times, and they are more committed than ever to redefining how we think of the supply chain in the restaurant space when it comes to food sourcing.”
Cheetah will expand from its Bay Area base, where the company is servicing more than 10% of all independent restaurants, and will be announcing entry into new markets in the coming months. Price transparency, nutritional transparency, and sourcing transparency are at the core of Cheetah’s national and international expansion plans. Cheetah’s marketplace is continuously adding local and sustainable vendors into its long list of partners. The Company is betting big on the post-pandemic rebound and renaissance of the restaurant industry by helping restaurants succeed with its honest, sustainable, and profit-enhancing products and tools.
