Bestie Bite, the Italian app dedicated to authentic video reviews in the hospitality sector, has closed a €1.5 million fresh-money funding round through a SAFE instrument. The investment was led by the Grassi family through their family holding company G&G, a shareholder of E80 Group S.p.A.
Raised less than four months after the company's first €700,000 round led by Techstars, the new funding brings Bestie Bite's total capital raised to €2.2 million. The proceeds will support growth in Italy and expansion into the United States.
Founded to address a growing disconnect in hospitality discovery, Bestie Bite tackles challenges on both sides of the market. Consumers, particularly younger generations, increasingly struggle to find restaurants, cafés and hotels they can trust. Unreliable reviews, fragmented information, and content dominated by influencers and sponsored posts have made discovery more difficult.
At the same time, the hospitality industry remains largely composed of small businesses: around 90 per cent of venues lack the budget or marketing expertise needed to stand out online. As a result, many local businesses remain difficult to discover. These challenges have become more pronounced since the pandemic, as discovery and booking habits have evolved.
On the consumer side, Bestie Bite uses artificial intelligence to understand users' preferences and guide them through video content, helping them make faster decisions. Unlike traditional review platforms, content is subject to verification measures, including user authentication, fraud prevention systems, and AI-powered video detection.
The platform also rewards users for contributing videos through cashback and "Missions" at partner restaurants.
For businesses, Bestie Bite introduces what it describes as the first "AI Marketing Employee" for hospitality: an AI system that automates activities traditionally handled by social media managers or agencies. Starting from a single community-generated video, the system creates and publishes a monthly editorial plan. Businesses also gain access to sentiment analysis and performance insights to monitor customer experience and service quality in real time.
Bestie Bite is led by co-founders Carlotta Robbe Di Lorenzo (CEO), and Caterina Vertefeuille (COO), both second-time founders with extensive hospitality experience. The founding team also includes Placido Falqueto (CTO), a software engineer with a PhD in AI and Robotics.
We want to change this market. Authenticity is the most valuable and scarce asset on the web: we are building a new standard and a technological layer that brings the full power of artificial intelligence to restaurants, always starting from real content. With this round, we are accelerating from Italy to the United States to make this the global standard,
said Carlotta Robbe Di Lorenzo and Caterina Vertefeuille, co-founders of Bestie Bite.
Bestie Bite has already recorded significant organic growth, surpassing 100,000 users and more than 120,000 uploaded videos across 80 countries.
A key objective of the new funding round is international expansion, particularly in the United States, where the company is establishing a base in San Francisco to accelerate growth in one of the world's leading hospitality and technology markets.