First Bite

Imagine this: you're sending outreach to 200 operators, and every single email references the exact dish on their menu that makes your product an obvious fit.   That used to mean hours of menu research. One contact at a time. Our newest feature uses the menu data behind our filterable operator database to instantly generate a "best fit menu item" for every contact on your target list, then drops it into your emails as a dynamic field. Personalization at scale. Tools built for foodservice. 

UK-based Love Struck spent years trying to crack US foodservice. Now they send 50+ samples a month to interested operators. They turned US foodservice from a mystery into a machine. Before First Bite: Quarterly trips from the UK No structure for how to target best-fit operators US felt like a black box After 6 months of using First Bite: 330+ active deals representing 2,200+ doors  50+ qualified sample requests a month 4x run rate revenue growth YoY "I don't think blindly going out and trying to do that on our own would be even possible. First Bite has been our only way to effectively target those opportunities." – Matt Riley, Chief Commercial Officer, Love Struck Read more about their successes here: https://lnkd.in/e_5VzXAR

58% of foodservice manufacturers say getting responses is their biggest challenge in prospecting. So, we analyzed 1M+ emails and found eight factors consistently determine whether an operator opens, reads, and responds. Then we built a tool to help you optimize your outreach.   See how your prospecting emails stack up against all eight factors by sending a cold email to operator@firstbite.ai, as if it was your target contact. You'll receive a report that coaches you on how likely you are to get a response along with recommendations on ways to improve against each element. This is too valuable not to try. More on the eight factors here: https://lnkd.in/eVwaP5wp

Cheers to all the operators and foodservice brands who attended our #2026RestaurantShow boat event! 🛥️🥂 We enjoyed stepping away from the busy expo floor for an afternoon on the water. Connecting people across foodservice is what we're all about — providing manufacturers a clear way to identify and engage with right-fit restaurant decision makers. So, naturally, we used the First Bite platform to build our guest list and invite the perfect mix of foodservice pros straight to the boat! Special thanks to our partners who provided product and rebates for guests to enjoy: Bob's Red Mill, Mike's Hot Honey, Zero Acre Farms, Sweet Loren's, Wandering Bear Coffee, Eat Just, Inc., Tractor Beverage Co., Beyond Meat, Renude.

What. A. Year.  I finally found time to reflect on all we accomplished at First Bite in 2025 in our latest newsletter (link below). By just about every metric, it was a year of tremendous growth for First Bite. Just a couple highlights: - Welcomed hundreds of new users across dozens of new customers, from emerging brands to publicly traded companies - Expanded our operator datasets to include three major new categories: healthcare, hotels and lodging, and convenience - we now cover 1.5M+ operators! - Brought our CRM to enterprise-grade and launched the first digital foodservice loyalty and rebates management platform - Reimagined the First Bite onboarding process to help each new customer launch an automated outbound prospecting email core competency in 60 days - Added integrations with the tools sales teams rely on to do their work, like all major email providers and product data management systems like Syndigo - Expanded our incredible full-time team, adding 11 people across engineering, customer success, sales, and research and acquired Pantry AI There’s even more to look forward to in 2026: keep an eye out for an updated UI (launched today!), new agentic AI workflows, and the next iteration of our operator loyalty and rebates management program — and that’s just in the coming weeks. We’ve also just launched a white-glove referral program. If you love First Bite, tell your friends and colleagues about us. When you do, you can earn platform credits and other perks (like date night on us). Send me a DM if you have a company we should connect with!

Before First Bite, the Smart Flour Foods team would often spend late nights going through spreadsheets. Hours of research and validation - manually tracking which restaurants qualify, which contacts are current, what's worth pursuing. Now they curate lists in 20-30 minutes. Response rates went from 1-2% to 6-10%+. Running multiple campaigns simultaneously instead of one at a time. First Bite eliminates the manual work so you can focus on the decisions that move foodservice deals forward.

Turns out foodservice operators actually want to hear from suppliers. Manufacturers reached >50k multi-unit operators in the last few months with First Bite. The results: - 7.86% reply rate (vs. <1% industry average) - 4,200 replies from decision makers - 2,000 requests for samples and product specs Not "potential reach" or impressions. Real emails to real decision-makers. Most foodservice teams assume operators don't want to be contacted. But when you reach the right people with the right message, the numbers prove otherwise. DM me for the full details.

We’re in San Francisco this week for our First Bite offsite, and part of it has been listening in on prospect calls and digging into real problems with foodservice sales teams. The problems foodservice sales leaders talk about aren’t new. But the cost of ignoring them is bigger than most realize. -When a sales rep spends hours updating CRM instead of selling… that’s not just wasted time. It’s lost pipeline. -When brokers and distributors are misaligned… that’s not just friction. It’s deals delayed or lost altogether. -When it takes 6 months to reach the right operators… that’s not just inefficiency. It’s competitors winning business you never even had a shot at. The truth is: foodservice sales doesn’t need another data dump. It needs workflows that actually move deals forward. That’s what we’re building at First Bite ... and hearing these calls makes it clear we’re on the right path.