Leasecake is an industry leader in lease and location management solutions tailored for restaurants and multi-unit operators. It’s designed to reduce risks and protect the locations, helping operators make smarter decisions and keeping track of events critical to their long-term success.
On October 22, 2024, EMERGING, the leading growth equity fund for restaurant-entertainment concepts and technology, joined Leasecake as a key strategic investor, successfully closing the concept’s $10M Series A extension. If you’re thinking this could be a perfect partnership, we couldn’t agree more.
Recently, we had the pleasure of speaking with the founder of Leasecake, Taj Adhav. Adhav’s extensive background includes starting his career as a Big Four CPA and working as an Imagineer at Disney on large real estate projects and new business launches. From there, he transitioned into technology, joining Channel Intelligence.
This background in technology and real estate gave him the skills and knowledge he needed to become the founder of Leasecake. Here’s what he had to say about his journey thus far, from starting out with Techstars to partnering with the Emerging Fund.
The Business Model Behind Leasecake
Taj Adhav: I first pitched the idea of Leasecake at Techstars Global Startup Weekend, and I immediately saw how the market resonated. We won Techstars globally across 200 cities in 58 countries.
Leasecake is real estate and location management made easy for multi-unit restaurant operators. Whether they’re franchisees or franchisors, they are focused on building their restaurant empire, not their real estate empire. Yet, at the heart of every great restaurant is a location, and that location requires a lease.
The amount of risk in that lease sometimes sneaks up on you, not to mention the cost of missing critical dates of permits, licenses, and vendor contracts that might have some really onerous terms. So, what Leasecake does is help you stay one step ahead to help you focus on driving your business and reducing the risk that you ultimately don’t even know exists.
For example, at a portfolio level and at a customer level, we can provide analyses that show you your critical or your exclusivity provisions over the last 10 years. How has your negotiating leverage changed or improved with your landlord? What are the things that they’re looking for? What’s coming up in your renewal options across your portfolio to negotiate? We’re not referring to just your rent rates or escalators, but other key things that AI can surface rather quickly and say we’ve got to get rid of these onerous terms that we agreed to 15 years ago.
So, creating a standard, tenant-friendly lease, customer by customer, restaurant by restaurant, QSR to fine dining to family, using the power of AI to give you knowledge and standardization of a lease, is key. We see AI as the creation of the ultimate tenant-friendly restaurant-based lease, and we’re on our way already. So that’s the vision of where we’re going, and that vision is a reality today.
The Pain Points Leasecake Resolves
We hear so often from prospects that we’re speaking to, and even customers who have been with us for four or five years said, “Hey, you know what, before Leasecake, here’s what happened: It cost me $200,000 because I missed a renewal option.”
And I said, “Okay, so walk me through that.”
And they said, “You know what, I had a pretty good relationship with my landlord, and I just thought, you know, hey, I missed it by one day. And I would call him up and say, ‘Hey landlord, this is me. I missed the renewal option by one day. I’m really sorry. I’m going to go ahead and give you my option to renew.’”
And the landlord says, “No, time out. I’m sorry, I’ve already got a tenant lined up. I’ve had a prospective tenant lined up to take your space, and I’ve been waiting for you to mess up.” It cost them $200,000, not just in missed revenue because they had to shut everything down, but also to renegotiate with that landlord. Signing up for another 10-year term was just incredibly expensive.
So, we hear this time and again, and in some cases, we’ve heard of million-dollar mistakes, especially in high-traffic areas. So, what Leasecake does is help you stay one step ahead to help you focus on driving your business and reducing the risk that you ultimately don’t even know exists.
Partnering with the EMERGING Fund
We’re so excited to be a partner with the EMERGING Fund. Over the last few years of getting to know Mat and his team, they’ve been phenomenal partners even before Emerging became an investor in our platform. I think they see the future. They certainly are technology innovators driving new value to the restaurant industry.
I think they have a unique mix in that the Emerging Fund lives at the intersection of private equity, technology, and restaurants. They have a unique perspective that I think, frankly, will change how restaurants are run and operated, allowing the restaurants in their portfolio to outcompete others in their markets. So, I couldn’t be more happy, couldn’t be more proud to be a partner with the Emerging Fund.
Leasecake and Taj Adhav’s Journey
We’ve been building Leasecake with purpose. We started small, but we recognize that the opportunity is massive within the restaurant space, and that is definitely our focus in North America. We started with franchisees, but becoming a standard for franchisors and corporate restaurants of all shapes and sizes, private and public. Our plan for the future, over the next couple of years, is to be the industry standard for real estate and location management.
What inspired me to create the company was the life that I’ve lived. I feel like I have been training for this all my life. I was a CPA for 15 years. I was the youngest kid, immigrant family, first generation. And I saw what my parents built as commercial tenants coming from India to Canada with $6 in their pocket.
What’s happening now is this movement to a true support infrastructure where they’re using technology to help differentiate themselves versus the other brands. I’ll give you some examples. Now, technology is used by really large franchisors to say, you know what, you’ve got a choice as a franchisee to open up another brand, but you should choose our brand because we’re providing a platform that allows you to scale.
The Next Chapter
At the EMERGING Fund, we’re excited to partner with this innovative company that shares our vision of helping restaurants grow faster while reducing risks and enhancing profitability. As the preferred real estate and location management platform used by global restaurant brands like Dave’s Hot Chicken, Jersey Mike’s, and Lettuce Entertain You, the future’s looking very bright for Leasecake.
