Nesto secures €11 million from Expedition to expand its AI workforce management solutions for restaurant chains.

      In summary: Nesto Software GmbH, a workforce management platform based in Karlsruhe for restaurant groups, has secured €11 million in growth equity from Expedition Growth Capital, a fund situated in London and Boston that focuses on bootstrapped European software firms generating over €5 million in annual recurring revenue. Founded by engineers from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Nesto oversees scheduling, demand forecasting, HR workflows, and payroll preparation for over 3,000 restaurant locations, handling more than 100,000 employee shifts daily across Europe. This is the first time Nesto has accepted institutional funding. The funds will be allocated towards enhancing product development, expanding sales and marketing efforts, and broadening NORA, Nesto's AI assistant, into a more comprehensive framework for restaurant back-office tasks.

      Established without institutional funding

      Nesto was established in Karlsruhe by Felix Kaiser, Co-Founder and CEO, alongside Dr. Theodor Ackbarow, Co-Founder and Executive Chairman, both trained as engineers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. The company developed its platform and expanded its client base to over 3,000 restaurant locations without external funding, reaching the scale that Expedition Growth Capital seeks before approaching institutional investors. Expedition's investment strategy focuses on bootstrapped European software firms with annual recurring revenue of €5 million or more, based on the premise that companies built without outside capital often develop stronger customer relationships and more disciplined unit economics than those that have expanded through early dilutive rounds.

      Expedition Growth Capital closed its third fund at $375 million in December 2025, making investments ranging from $10 million to $25 million in each company within its portfolio. The investment in Nesto is on the lower end of this range. Will Sheldon, the Expedition partner overseeing the investment, characterized Nesto as “an exceptional example of a category-defining European software company” that has been “quietly transforming restaurant operations across Europe.” Expedition has offices in London and Boston and concentrates on profitable or nearly profitable software firms ready to invest in sales and marketing after validating their product against real customers at scale.

      Labour as a specific challenge

      The hospitality industry faces a unique workforce management problem that is both more complex and costlier than in most other sectors. A restaurant group operating multiple locations must generate schedules that align with fluctuating demand, often influenced by weather, local events, and day-of-week variations—factors that fixed weekly schedules fail to accommodate. Overstaffing directly reduces profit margins; understaffing impacts service quality, which can lead to decreased customer retention. The administrative demands of creating legally compliant schedules, monitoring attendance, and preparing payroll for a widely distributed workforce consume management time that could otherwise be used for service delivery.

      In the period leading up to the Nesto fundraising, labour costs in the hospitality sector across the EU increased by 11.2% year-on-year, while the adoption rate of AI tools among EU hospitality businesses was approximately 6% as of 2023, based on Eurostat data. The disparity between these cost pressures and the slow adoption of AI tools signals a market opportunity that Nesto aims to address. In April 2026, TNW explored how AI is reshaping hospitality operations while maintaining the human touch—a balance that Nesto's positioning directly engages: automating scheduling and administration allows managers to prioritize service quality over managing spreadsheets.

      Nesto's platform integrates with point-of-sale systems, supplier platforms, and payroll providers, yielding demand forecasts that the company claims are 92% accurate, based on historical sales data, local event calendars, and weather inputs. These forecasts enable automated scheduling, which supports HR workflows and payroll preparation. The company reports a 10% improvement in labour productivity as a key outcome across its customer base, with McDonald’s as a prominently documented case: European franchise operators reported a 9% decrease in staff costs and a 22% boost in productivity post-implementation of the platform. Other notable enterprise clients include L’Osteria and Lagardère.

      NORA and the agent-based framework

      Nesto's latest product initiative is NORA, an AI assistant and agent system that expands the platform’s capabilities beyond scheduling to encompass a broader range of operational and administrative responsibilities that restaurant managers handle every day. NORA is designed to respond to queries regarding staffing regulations, compliance standards, and operational metrics, while also performing tasks such as absence management, shift-swapping approvals, and payroll exception handling without requiring manual navigation through multiple systems.

      This direction mirrors a broader shift in enterprise software towards AI agents that act on behalf of users rather than merely providing information. Nvidia introduced enterprise security to AI agent implementations with its NemoClaw platform at GTC 2026 in March, establishing formal benchmarks for deploying AI agents in regulated and operationally sensitive settings. Nesto's NORA framework addresses similar needs in the restaurant operational context: an agent capable of being assigned tasks and trusted to complete them within established operational and compliance parameters without requiring constant managerial oversight.

      The funding will partly support the development of