Alpa raises £2.6m pre-seed to deliver restaurants' real-time P&L from POS feeds
This article covers Alpa, a London foodtech startup, which has raised £2.6m in a pre-seed funding round led by Daphni to build a real-time operational financial layer for restaurants and franchise groups. The funding will finance engineering, data infrastructure, supplier integrations and AI-driven classification to give hospitality operators live profit and loss visibility instead of waiting for monthly accounts to close.
Alpa, a London foodtech startup, has raised £2.6 million in a pre-seed funding round led by Daphni to build a real-time operational financial layer for restaurants and franchise groups. The capital will fund engineering, data infrastructure, supplier integrations and AI-driven classification so hospitality operators can see live profit and loss rather than waiting for monthly accounts to close.
Why it matters
Hospitality runs on thin margins and tight timing. Many operators make decisions with financial data that is weeks out of date, which increases waste and reduces the ability to respond to margin pressure. Alpa says recent research it commissioned found 79 percent of restaurants want real-time data while 27 percent cannot track basic KPIs — a gap that, if addressed, could materially change daily operations across the sector.
The announcement is significant because it targets a practical problem — fragmented financial data across POS systems, banks and suppliers — rather than a purely analytics play. If Alpa can reliably normalise and deliver live profitability metrics, operators can move from reactive accounting cycles to daily operational decisions.
Inside the product
Alpa ingests transactional data from point-of-sale systems, banking feeds and direct supplier integrations and transforms it into what the company describes as a live operational profit and loss. The platform is designed to sit alongside existing accounting packages rather than replace them, focusing on daily use by operations teams to show gross margin, labour, overheads and cash flow in near real time.
Early pilots include franchise and restaurant group deployments such as the Taster brand SpudBros Express. The product roadmap given for this round emphasises native connectivity to the hospitality supply chain, automation, machine learning for classification and operator-grade financial workflows intended to reduce manual reconciliation.
In the announcement, Jean-François Moy, Co-founder & CTO at Alpa, said:
The real moat is not just data access, it's native connectivity. We’re building direct connections to the hospitality supply chain itself: POS systems, banking infrastructure, and food and beverage suppliers, and using automation and AI to structure that data into real-time financial understanding. This funding allows us to go deep on engineering, machine learning and large-scale classification to make that possible.
Who are the investors?
The round was led by Daphni, with participation from True Capital, 2100 Ventures, Firedrop, Oprtrs Club, Kima Ventures and Sonorcap. Angel investors include Voodoo founder Alexandre Yazdi and Jérôme Tafani, the former Burger King France CEO and ex-McDonald’s Europe CFO, who has joined Alpa’s board.
Daphni framed the investment as a bet on a founding team with domain experience and technical depth, and on a product aimed at a large addressable market across European hospitality groups. The firm pointed to the founders’ track records — Anton Soulier’s experience at Deliveroo and Taster, and Moy’s engineering background at Vestiaire Collective — as a key reason for backing Alpa.
In the announcement, Pierre-Eric Leibovici, Partner at Daphni, said:
In terms of track record, you rarely find a founding pair with as much deep industry expertise and technical know-how as Anton and Jean-François. With Alpa, they’re building something which is clearly and urgently needed for an industry with a highly valuable addressable market. With the quality of both the team and the product, we expect Alpa to make a notable impact for restaurants and franchise owners across the continent.
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Founder perspective
Alpa’s co-founders cast the product as an operational layer rather than an accounting replacement. Anton Soulier, Co-founder & CEO at Alpa, framed the problem in pragmatic terms: delayed, accounting-driven financial visibility destroys value by preventing timely decisions.
In the announcement, Anton Soulier, Co-founder & CEO at Alpa, said:
Hospitality runs on thin margins, but financial visibility still operates on monthly cycles. That gap creates massive inefficiency and destroys value. Alpa is built to close it by giving operators real-time financial clarity so they can make decisions during the month, not after it. We’re not replacing accounting systems; we’re building the operational financial layer they’ve always been missing.
The founders’ prior ventures give the company immediate credibility with large restaurant operators and franchise owners, and Alpa’s product-first approach aims to capture routine operational workflows rather than occasional executive reporting.
The bigger picture
Operational finance and connected accounting are increasingly a focus for hospitality and retail businesses that face margin pressure and supply chain volatility. Investors have recently shown appetite for tools that move businesses from retrospective reporting to proactive optimisation. The deal reflects growing interest from foodtech investors in startups that combine native integrations with machine learning to automate bookkeeping-adjacent tasks.
For UK and European hospitality operators, getting closer to daily profitability metrics could alter procurement, rostering and pricing decisions. That makes this pre-seed round notable not just for the founders and backers but for the broader push to modernise how small and multi-site hospitality businesses run their finances.
The funding also underlines early-stage investor confidence in founder teams with operational provenance and engineering depth, a pattern that is likely to shape more fintech-for-hospitality investments across the UK and Europe in the coming years.
They've invested in Alpa
Get to know these foodtech investors
| Investor | Sector | Stage | Activity | Team | Connect |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Daphni | 5 investments investments | 16 contacts contacts | |||
 True Capital | 3 investments investments | more info | |||
 2100 Ventures | 7 investments investments | 3 contacts contacts | |||
 firedrop | 1 investment investment | more info | |||
 Oprtrs Club | 1 investment investment | more info | |||
 Kima Ventures | 4 investments investments | 4 contacts contacts |
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