Bestie Bite, an app focused on authentic video
reviews for the hospitality sector, has closed a $700,000 funding round. The
funding, raised mainly through SAFE instruments, was led by Techstars.
Investors include Zooga VC, Mamba Ventures, and several Italian and
international business angels, among them Christian Marcon, Angelo La Rocca,
and Claudio Vaccaro.
Founded in Rome in 2024 by Carlotta Robbe Di Lorenzo (CEO) and Caterina Vertefeuille (COO), the startup aims to simplify
restaurant discovery for users and make marketing more accessible for
hospitality businesses.
The company targets a common challenge in
choosing venues: unreliable text reviews, fragmented information, and content
heavily influenced by sponsorships and influencers.
By applying AI to the hospitality sector, the
app helps users discover restaurants, bars, and hotels through short, real
videos created by everyday customers, supported by a cashback and gamification
system that encourages honest sharing of experiences, whether positive or
negative, as long as they are authentic.
We built Bestie Bite starting from a real
problem we face every day: choosing a restaurant shouldn’t require luck or
hours spent reading unreliable reviews. This round allows us to accelerate a
revolution already in motion: restoring authenticity to dining experiences and
giving every restaurant simple tools to communicate with transparency,
says Carlotta Robbe Di Lorenzo.
For hospitality businesses, this authentic
content becomes a practical asset: the app acts as a marketing tool powered
entirely by artificial intelligence, collecting real user videos and turning
them into ready-to-publish social media content for restaurant owners, all
managed via WhatsApp. The AI also delivers sentiment and performance insights
to help monitor service quality in real time.
The platform has already shown strong organic
traction, with over 70,000 registered users, 60,000 videos uploaded across more
than 70 countries, and multiple viral spikes.
The capital raised will allow the startup to
expand its team in product, engineering, and business development, as well as
further develop AI-based features within the app. A portion of the investment
will be allocated to marketing and growth initiatives, targeting restaurant
owners and users in major Italian cities and initial international markets.