Digital workplace leader closes deal to acquire French digital hospitality innovator Heystan
YOOBIC, the all-in-one digital workplace for frontline teams, today announced its purchase of Heystan, a digital training and knowledge management platform serving the catering and hospitality industries. Marking YOOBIC’s first ever acquisition, the deal further bolsters the company’s presence in the vibrant food and dining space and underscores its strong momentum and continuing global growth across the hospitality and retail sectors.
Based in Paris, Heystan serves developing and growing hospitality and catering chains, addressing four different markets: traditional restaurants, fast food chains, hotels and bakeries. The fully personalised training and knowledge management application is used by a strong cross-section of leading quick service restaurants (QSR) and hotel brands. Heystan’s agile team has driven rapid expansion since the product’s launch in 2021, with annual recurring revenue set to hit $3 million by 2024, a +20X growth over 2 years, demonstrating the acute need for customised training and knowledge management for hospitality frontline workers.
“YOOBIC’s vision for digital transformation in the retail and hospitality space is in complete alignment with what we’ve built at Heystan,” said Heystan co-founder and CEO, Leo Corcelli. “Like YOOBIC, we’re passionate about optimising workplaces, empowering frontline employees, and driving bottom-line results in challenging, high-stakes work environments. We couldn’t be happier to be scaling that mission under the YOOBIC team’s leadership.”
This acquisition reinforces YOOBIC’s extensive QSR capabilities, which are already trusted by dozens of top brands including Domino’s, BurgerFi, Taster and Bonchon Chicken. YOOBIC will also gain extended reach into the energetic market of hotel and restaurant chains in their development and acceleration phase.
Coming as many tech businesses are hunkering down in the face of challenging market conditions, the deal also speaks to YOOBIC’s strength and the enduring demand for frontline employee enablement solutions. With YOOBIC’s 2022 Frontline Employee Experience Survey revealing that 49% of frontline retail and hospitality workers don’t think that onboarding prepared them well for their job, and 58% feeling their organisation hasn’t invested in their professional development, there has never been a greater need for tools to engage frontline teams, and drive learning and collaboration.
“Careers in QSR, hospitality and catering can be extremely challenging, but also deeply rewarding. This acquisition signposts YOOBIC’s momentum as we continue our commitment to engaging and supporting frontline teams,” says Fabrice Haiat, YOOBIC CEO and co-founder. “By welcoming the Heystan team into the YOOBIC family, we’re expanding our ability to deliver agile, tech-forward solutions to help QSR and catering workers take pride in the value they create and better serve their customers while driving real bottom-line results for their employers.”