SIDES has launched SIDES Capital, a restaurant financing product, with Stripe as its exclusive financing partner. It's available only in Germany and only to restaurants already using its payment product, SIDES Pay. SIDES is a Berlin-based restaurant and delivery software provider founded in 2014 as SimplyDelivery.
As its old name suggests, SIDES started with delivery and has grown into an all-in-one platform for quick-service restaurants, ghost kitchens, and chains. Its software runs the till, where staff take orders and payments, and the kitchen screens that show incoming orders instead of paper tickets. SIDES also lets each restaurant build its own branded webshop and app for delivery, pickup, and table orders. Additionally, orders from Lieferando, Wolt and other delivery companies land in the same SIDES system. The company launched its own payment product, SIDES Pay, in 2022, also built on Stripe.
Eligible restaurants see a personalised offer in their SIDES dashboard. They choose how much they want, see the total cost and repayment plan before accepting, and receive the money into their business account within one to two business days. They submit no additional data, and the loan costs a fixed fee instead of an interest rate. Repayment runs automatically as a fixed share of daily SIDES Pay sales, so a busy month pays the financing off faster and a quiet one slows it down, with a monthly minimum in place. SIDES pitches the Capital product to restaurant owners to open a second location, order a new pizza oven or renovate before a busy season.
Why SIDES Capital is tied to SIDES Pay
The limitation of SIDES Capital to restaurants using SIDES Pay is worth a closer look. The obvious reason is that Stripe sits directly in the payment flow for these restaurants, and repayment can be deducted from incoming sales. This reduces default risk and makes the product available to restaurants that would otherwise not get a loan. But I wonder if SIDES has a second motivation. Restaurants can use the SIDES software with and without its Pay product. If only sales through SIDES Pay count toward a financing offer, this could motivate restaurants to switch from an external payment provider to SIDES Pay.
This probably also means that only point-of-sale sales within the restaurant, plus sales through the restaurant's own website and app, count for SIDES Capital. As mentioned above, SIDES also lets restaurant owners connect delivery platforms like Wolt or Uber Eats to its software, but I assume that revenue doesn't count toward SIDES Capital.
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Every restaurant platform now has a capital product
Restaurant owners have historically been underserved with financing products. I am not going to say that they are overserved now. But the reality is that, depending on their software stack, a restaurant owner can now apply for a loan in several places, starting with the delivery platforms most restaurants use. Lieferando's parent, Just Eat Takeaway, works with YouLend and has passed €150m in financing across seven European markets, including Germany. Wolt runs Wolt Capital with finmid, and Deliveroo launched Deliveroo Capital with Liberis in the UK this year. The setup is almost identical across all three: the offer appears in the merchant portal, the restaurant pays a fixed fee, and repayment comes out of the sales that platform processes.
Now restaurant software providers seem to be following. Nory, the Dublin-based restaurant management software, launched Nory Capital with YouLend in 2024. Nory does not process payments itself, so offers are based on card turnover across all channels, including Just Eat and Deliveroo. In Germany, allO builds all-in-one software similar to SIDES, but for a different audience: independent restaurants, often serving international cuisines such as Vietnamese, Indian, or Chinese. It offers financing with finmid and Stripe Capital in parallel. SIDES is the latest restaurant software provider to join and works only with Stripe.
The question is who is best positioned to offer loans. Assuming application ease and speed are the same for all, it comes down to risk appetite and underwriting capabilities, which determine how many restaurants get approved, and the cost of the financing product. I would argue the former depends solely on the lender behind it and its capabilities. The latter depends partly on that, but also on how much revenue runs through the platform or software provider. A restaurant with a large share of orders from one delivery platform is perhaps best served there. A restaurant with many in-house sales and strong online channels can potentially get better rates through restaurant software providers such as SIDES.
