Calculus, one of the UK’s longest-established EIS and VCT fund managers with over 25 years backing innovative growth companies, announces a £2.5m investment into Edify, the AI-powered operations platform built for quick service restaurants (QSRs) and hospitality chains. The investment forms part of a £3m round completed alongside current investors.
Edify was founded in 2024 by Ed Barry, a hospitality operator who built and sold Over Under, a London coffee chain, to Blank Street Coffee in 2022. Through that journey, Ed saw how fragmented systems, manual processes, and unclear information flows were holding hospitality businesses back.
General Managers (GMs) were spending too much time reconciling figures, chasing orders, and translating data into action, when they should have been leading teams, improving standards, and running stronger stores. Edify was built from that perspective: a live intelligence platform designed around the realities of the floor, and the decisions operators need to make every day.
The platform integrates inventory management, demand forecasting, and back of house operations into a single system. Its AI learns usage patterns to automate ordering, flag discrepancies before they become costly, and generate precise prep plans shift by shift. Ask Edify, its AI analytics agent, consolidates operational data into live dashboards, giving operators instant answers without digging through spreadsheets.
Current customers and brands served include Pret A Manger, Dunkin’ Donuts, WatchHouse, Yolk Brands. At Pret A Manger, Edify is on track to save each store general manager two hours per day, equivalent to approximately $4m in annual savings across UK locations alone.
Why now
Hospitality operators are facing rising costs, tighter margins, and ongoing staffing pressure, while GMs are being asked to manage more with less. They are accountable for everything from waste and labour to customer experience, but too often they are still working across spreadsheets, manual ordering, and disconnected systems. Edify brings those signals together into clear, actionable intelligence, giving GMs the confidence, fluency, and focus to lead more successful stores, while helping central teams understand what is really happening across the business.
Alexander Crawford, Co-Head of Investments at Calculus:
“Ed built Edify because he’d lived the problem himself, and that shows in how the product is designed. Edify’s suite of products is a system built around how operators work. The customer traction at this stage, with brands like Pret and Dunkin’ Donuts already on the platform, is exceptional. We believe Edify has the potential to become the defining platform for how QSRs operate, and we’re proud to back them at this stage of the journey.”
Ed Barry, Founder & CEO at Edify:
“After scaling and selling my own coffee shop chain, I saw that the admin burden isn’t just a small business problem, it’s an industry problem. Operators are making critical decisions every day with fragmented systems, unclear data, and too much noise. Edify exists to change that."
"We’re not bolting AI onto old software. We’re building a live intelligence system around the way hospitality actually works, connecting the floor and HQ so GMs can lead better, stores can perform stronger, and businesses can grow smarter. Having Calculus alongside us, with their track record of backing ambitious UK technology businesses, gives us the platform to put Edify into the hands of many more operators.”
