A diner scans a QR code, orders lunch, pays, and walks out. The meal was good and the restaurant made a sale, of course. But in many cases, that customer is effectively gone the moment they leave.
No name. No direct connection. No clear sense of what brought them in or what might bring them back.
For an industry built on repeat business, that is a serious blind spot, and it is the problem Miami-based startup Dishio is trying to solve.
The company just announced that it has raised a $2.5 million seed round at a $20 million valuation, funding that will help it build what co-founders Brett Linkletter and Jace Kovacevich [pictured above] see as a missing layer in restaurant technology: a system that gives operators a full view of the customer relationship from first click to repeat visit.
The idea grew out of experience. Before Dishio, the pair built Dineline, a restaurant marketing agency that helped drive customer acquisition for 2,500 brands and reached 27 million guests over the past decade. Along the way, they saw the same issue again and again: Restaurants had software everywhere, but ownership nowhere.
Reservation systems held one set of data. POS systems held another. Loyalty platforms, online ordering, and digital ads all captured separate pieces of the puzzle.
As Linkletter put it in the company’s press release, “Most guest visits disappear without ever becoming an owned customer relationship, and existing platforms only make that worse by trapping data in disconnected systems.”
“We built Dishio to unify guest data across every touchpoint and turn it into automated marketing tied directly to revenue,” he continued.
Restaurants have spent years racing to adopt digital tools, from QR menus to delivery apps to online booking systems. But digital adoption has often created a patchwork rather than a system. Operators now have more customer information than ever, yet many still struggle to answer basic questions: Which campaign brought this guest in? What made them come back? Which locations convert first-time diners into regulars?
Dishio’s answer is to sit above that messy stack rather than replace it. The platform connects data from QR menus, reservations, POS systems, loyalty tools, online ordering, and digital advertising, then uses AI to automate follow-up marketing tied to customer behavior.
Kovacevich said that practical insight shaped the platform. “Through Dineline, we’ve seen firsthand how broken attribution, fragmented guest data, and creative bottlenecks are limiting restaurant growth,” he said. “Every feature in Dishio was built to solve a real operator pain point we encountered managing campaigns across thousands of restaurant concepts.”
And you don’t have to trust the founders’ word for it. Look no further than Peter Litvienko, director of operations at legendary watering hole Kiki on the River.
“Dishio has completely changed how we handle digital reservations. It’s not just a tool, it’s a revenue engine,” Litvienko asserted. “Guests are converting at a much higher rate, and the data helps us optimize in real time. What we’ve done in one section of the venue is just the beginning.”
As Refresh Miami regularly reports, Miami has become a growing base for fintech, healthtech, enterprise software, and more – but startups focused on restaurant infrastructure have had a lower profile, despite South Florida’s deep hospitality roots.
Dishio sits at the meeting point of both worlds: old-school hospitality economics and modern AI software. And that’s something to toast to.
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