Chicago-based EMERGING and Promethean Investments have co-launched The Experience Fund (XPR), a $300 million investment vehicle with a $500 million hard cap, targeting artificial intelligence, automation platforms, and IP holdings built for the hospitality and foodservice industry. The fund is co-sponsored 50/50 by the two firms and led by EMERGING Managing Partner Mathew Focht and Promethean Managing Partner Michael Burt.
What the Fund Targets
XPR is structured to invest in what the sponsors call the "intelligence layer" of the experience economy — the software, data infrastructure, and automation systems that run beneath consumer-facing restaurant and entertainment brands. Priority categories include order and beverage automation, computer vision, autonomous service, and labor and supply-chain intelligence platforms. For foodservice equipment dealers and consultants tracking automation spend, those categories map directly to back-of-house capital decisions that operators are increasingly being asked to make alongside traditional equipment purchases.
The fund's operational edge comes through Buyers Edge Platform, an industry group-purchasing and data organization that works with nearly one in three U.S. restaurants. John Davie serves as both GP of EMERGING and CEO of Buyers Edge Platform. That data access gives prospective portfolio companies a ready distribution route to tens of thousands of operators from day one — a significant commercialization advantage for early-stage platforms trying to prove unit economics across diverse kitchen environments.
The Operator Case
Focht's investment thesis rests on a structural inefficiency that most foodservice operators already know well: the restaurant industry is the second-largest private-sector employer in the U.S., employing roughly 15.7 million people — about 10 percent of the workforce — yet operates on single-digit margins, 35–40 percent annual turnover, and heavily manual processes. "The winners won't be the flashiest consumer app," Focht said. "They'll be the AI platforms that take cost, labor friction and guesswork out of every location — and we can see which ones actually work, because we see the operating data across roughly a third of U.S. restaurants."
EMERGING's existing portfolio offers a window into the kinds of platforms XPR may back. Previous technology investments include Botrista, a beverage automation system; BrewBird; TaiV; and Serve, an autonomous delivery robot. Those bets signal an appetite for hardware-adjacent automation — the kind of platforms that sit alongside or integrate with commercial kitchen equipment rather than replacing it outright. For equipment specifiers and consultants designing ghost kitchens, commissary operations, or high-volume quick-service buildouts, the growing availability of venture-backed automation tools increasingly factors into facility planning decisions.
Burt framed the broader thesis in terms of infrastructure: "We're investing in the infrastructure that drives physical entertainment... the B2B infrastructure that helps deliver the best in-person experience for the consumers." Promethean brings more than 20 years of institutional private equity experience in consumer, retail, and services businesses to the partnership, providing the capital structuring depth that early-stage automation companies typically lack when scaling across large operator networks.
XPR's launch signals that institutional capital is now treating foodservice automation — energy-saving kitchen technology included — as a distinct, fundable asset class rather than a subcategory of general restaurant tech. For equipment dealers and manufacturer reps, that flow of capital should accelerate the pipeline of automation-layer products seeking operator integration partnerships in the years ahead.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
