Embargo is a UK CRM, loyalty, and ordering platform, used by nearly 2,500 food and drinks SMEs. Founded by Fryderyk Szydlowski and Tsewang Wangkang, Embargo allows restaurants, coffee shops and bakeries to reward regulars, capture data, communicate with their customers and offer direct ordering for delivery and pickup, while consumers use the Embargo App (rated 4.9/5 on the AppStore) as a digital wallet for paperless loyalty cards offered by renowned hospitality brands.

The company has reported a 200% increase in revenue in the past two years, achieving this growth without any increases to its team or costs. It has also just exceeded 11 million transactions on its app, with 50% of those coming since January 2024.

Szydlowski said: “We are about to reach half a million app transactions monthly, which is a great testimonial to the work we put it in to make our solution easy to use and absolutely best in class for both businesses and their customers.”

The £350,000 Smart Grant will now allow Embargo to build the first fully-automated, AI-driven CRM platform for hospitality businesses. By capturing and analysing a vast range of customer data – cross referencing what they purchase and how often against the time of day, day of the week, weather and more – the model will help businesses enhance their marketing, pricing, loyalty and communication strategies to support SMEs across the country.

Wangkang explained: “Our mission is to help the tens of thousands of hospitality SMEs to tackle the major challenges they continue to face. Increases to running costs thanks to rising wages, inflation and the incoming National Insurance changes make this ever-more important – the sector needs help.

“We are beyond excited to receive this grant and take our mission to the next level. SMEs deserve the highest level of technology in an easy-to-use, scalable form. We have already shown that our platform has major impact on our customers’ growth – our AI development will now make it even more powerful, giving businesses tools they never had.”

Besides the UK Smart Grant, Embargo is also finalising its EIS funding round, which will be used to fuel their market penetration, revenue growth and further develop the platform.

Szydlowski added: “Our cash-efficient strategy and product-led growth have attracted fantastic investors to our round. We are looking to oversubscribe it given the interest we have received and use the fact that we still have EIS allocation left. There’s a lot of work ahead of us but we couldn’t be more excited. Hospitality SMEs need powerful, easy-to-use solutions more than ever and we are here to provide them. It is time to accelerate!”

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