Top 25 Spotlight: heymate!™

Helping Restaurants Compete with the Giants

Independent restaurants are the lifeblood of our local neighborhoods, but running one is an uphill battle. While they can cook great food and provide excellent service, many struggle with a massive, systemic hurdle: bringing customers back. While major restaurant chains deploy expensive loyalty systems, sophisticated customer data, and dedicated marketing teams to dominate the market, independent operators are often left guessing.

That is the exact gap heymate!™ is closing. The startup is building an AI operating system designed to level the playing field for small, independent restaurants. By giving local owners access to the same data-driven advantages as multi-billion-dollar chains, heymate!™ helps them attract new guests, retain regulars, and deeply understand their daily business operations.

The scope of this challenge is a matter of survival for the Canadian food and beverage sector. According to data from Restaurants Canada, a brutal combination of soaring food costs, labor shortages, and inflation-wary consumers pulling back on discretionary spending has left 36% of Canadian restaurant operators running at a loss or just breaking even—a number that has tripled since 2019. With over half of independent operators reporting fewer guests this year, predictable customer retention is no longer just a marketing goal; it’s a necessity to keep the doors open.

While Restaurants Canada notes that 51% of major quick-service chains leverage loyalty software to build “stickiness” with value-conscious guests, only 29% of full-service, independent eateries have the resources to offer them. By replacing complex, enterprise-level tech stacks with an intuitive AI tool, heymate!™ turns local hospitality into a data-backed competitive edge.

Levelling the Hospitality Playing Field

What They’ve Done: heymate!™ has captured rapid market traction, successfully scaling its platform to support more than 300 restaurants across Canada and the United States. Beyond sheer expansion, the startup has achieved a rare milestone for early-stage ventures: building a profitable business while simultaneously reinvesting capital into its ongoing product development and AI growth engine. Their closest collaborators are the restaurant owners themselves, whose daily feedback shapes the software into an intuitive tool built for the chaotic reality of foodservice.

Why NVBC: For the heymate!™ team, the 2026 New Ventures BC Competition, presented by Innovate BC, provides a critical opportunity to step away from day-to-day operations and focus on the bigger picture. The competition has pushed the founders to sharpen their market vision and refine how they communicate their story, while opening vital doors to mentors, investors, and peers within the British Columbia tech ecosystem.

Up Next: The next 12 months are all about aggressive North American scaling. The startup is focused on expanding its footprint deeper into the United States, forming strategic partnerships to accelerate restaurant acquisition, and driving deeper adoption of its new AI tools. Winning in 2026 means making heymate!™ an indispensable part of daily operations for neighborhood spots across the continent.

The Simplicity Secret

One of the hardest lessons the team has uncovered along their journey is a trap that catches many tech founders: falling in love with complex features rather than simple solutions. In the early days, they realized that great technology is entirely useless if it is too difficult to explain, deploy, or sell to a busy restaurant owner who is already working a 14-hour shift.

They quickly learned that many startups spend years building sophisticated features that customers never actually requested. By shifting their focus to constant communication, making direct sales, and listening closely to frontline feedback, the heymate!™ team discovered that the best products are often the simplest ones. Building strictly around immediate, real-world customer needs has made their platform easier to adopt, scale, and recommend.