Kim Teo ate out for almost every meal. She would look at restaurant Instagram pages to see what dishes looked like. Venues avoided photos on menus, and that gap became Mr Yum.
It was not her first venture. She had started Simply Borrowed, a bridesmaid dress hire platform, and Neighbour Flavour, an app for buying home-cooked meals, which she stopped working on in 2016.
Mr Yum began in Melbourne with co-founders Kerry Osborn and Adrian Osman. It ran in a web browser, not an app. A pilot at three venues reached up to 25% of customers within days, and the seed round of A$1.5 million came from angels, Australian Venue Co and venue owners.
In May 2021 it raised A$11 million, led by TEN13 with AirTree. In 2022 it cut about 17% of staff. In September 2023 it merged with me&u in an all-stock deal, with Teo as CEO, and the combined business processes more than A$2 billion a year across more than 6,000 venues.