The Foodics story: from a small software shop to thousands of restaurants

Imagine that the order you place at a restaurant every day runs through a system that started at a small software company in Khobar. This is the story of Foodics.

The beginning: ALWANS

In 2010, Ahmad AlZaini and Mosab AlOthmani, classmates at King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, founded a software company called ALWANS. Ahmad studied electrical engineering, and Mosab studied computer engineering.

At the time most restaurants ran on paper: printed menus, handwritten orders, and the accounts done late at night.

From menu to cashier

Their first product was a digital menu on the iPad. But a menu alone wasn't enough. A restaurant needs a system that runs the order from start to finish.

In 2014 Foodics launched as a cloud cashier system on the iPad, with Ahmad as CEO and Mosab as CTO.

The key part: they ran it for three years without outside funding.

The cashier as a gateway

After that, the cashier became the door to everything else:

• Inventory, kitchen screens and reports
• Online ordering and payment for the restaurant's customers
• Foodics Pay, payment solutions licensed by the Saudi Central Bank
• Foodics Capital, financing for restaurants

Here's the smart move: Foodics sees a restaurant's sales every day, so it can finance the restaurant based on its data, with repayment taken as a small cut of daily card settlements.

When you sit inside your customer's daily operations, you know more about them than any bank does.

Funding

• 2017: $4 million led by Raed Ventures and Riyad Taqnia Fund.
• 2019: $4 million pre-Series B.
• 2021: A $20 million Series B led by Sanabil, alongside a $100 million lending facility from Maalem Investments.
• 2022: A $170 million Series C led by Prosus and Sanabil.

Where is it now?

Foodics says it runs in more than 40,000 branches, and more than 6 billion orders have passed through its systems since 2014. According to its CFO, $13 billion in sales went through the platform in 2025.

The company hasn't announced an official valuation. Reports and Dealroom estimates put it at up to $1 billion. In 2025 it talked about a Tadawul listing within two to three years.

The lesson for you as a founder

Start with a small tool the customer needs every day, then build around it. Whoever owns the daily moment can sell everything after it.

Sources: Wamda 2017, Entrepreneur 2017, Foodics 2021, Foodics 2022, Foodics 2025, Kristie Neo 2026, Dealroom.