Skip to main content

Why we decided to build another hospitality SaaS in 2025

RestaPro Team
Product & Platform

In mid-2025 we sat down with an uncomfortable question: do we really need another tool for restaurants? The market looks saturated. There are reservation systems, POS terminals, loyalty programs. And yet, every time we walked into a kitchen or stepped behind a bar, the same thing happened: the screen the manager was using looked like it was built in 2010.

We have spent eight years building SaaS for other industries. The founder's partner runs a restaurant in the city center, so the testing ground was already in place. After many late dinners spent talking it over, the conclusion was that it was worth a shot.

What grated on us about current software​

It is not a feature problem. It is a problem of how it feels to use. Three things we saw almost everywhere:

  • Dense interfaces packed with tabs and submenus, designed for an admin who can sit at a desk for half an hour. Not for a server who has twenty seconds between orders.
  • Literal translations from English. "Booking", "reservation status", "guest". Half-baked.
  • Mobile apps that are just the shrunken web version, with 8-pixel buttons no finger can hit.

On top of that, the monthly cost of some platforms is hard to justify for a 40-cover restaurant.

The hypothesis​

If we built a tool around three principles, there was room:

  1. Modern design. Readable typography, real contrast, smooth animations. Something you actually enjoy opening.
  2. Real Spanish. Not machine translation. Talking the way people talk behind a bar.
  3. Mobile first. Eighty percent of the time, the front-of-house team is looking at their phone, not the laptop in the back office.

Why now​

Two things made the timing work. First, the infrastructure to build products like this is more accessible than ever: managed databases, authentication, edge functions. It used to take five people to get started; now two are enough for a few months.

Second, we have a restaurant owner showing us her pain points every night when she closes up. That kind of feedback cannot be bought.

What follows on this blog is the "making of" the months leading up to launch. Interviews, hard calls, things we broke, and things we saved ourselves from doing. Here we go.

ESENCA