Independent restaurants are being out-marketed by chains with content teams — not because the food isn't better,
but because a marketing hire costs more than a line cook and agencies price them out. Cherry replaces that entire
function with an AI marketing desk: $99–$349 flat a month, approval-first, running on a
self-hosted stack with a near-zero cost base.
The problem
Great food, dead feeds.
A marketing hire runs $3,000–5,000 a month. Local agencies want $750–1,500 per door plus ad markups. DIY tools are a chore that stops by February. The result is consistent: great kitchens with empty Google profiles, dead Instagrams and unanswered reviews — while chains out-publish them 10-to-1.
The market
~1,000,000 US food-service doors.
We start where we live: Macomb County, Michigan — a 1,000-lead database already mapped, routes planned, first customer signed. Then every strip mall in America: salons, gyms and services with the identical problem and the identical tool. Same engine, new vertical.
The product
An AI marketing desk, approval-first.
Nightly press writes a 7-day buffer (captions, images, reels), an approval agenda, ads created paused, reviews drafted and linted, newsletters and blog from the same content brain, a scored SEO audit — every day, every location, reported by morning. 40+ agent actions, MCP-native.
The model
Flat SaaS. Pass-through media.
$99–$349/mo by tier + $8/post overage. Ad spend is 100% pass-through — no markup means no media-buying compliance exposure and no churn cliff when spend scales. The stack is self-hosted; AI runs on batch pricing and local models. Gross margin expands as volume grows.
Where it stands
Built. Running. One signed.
Product complete and tested — engine, dashboard, MCP server, order engine, portal. Bun N Run (5 locations) is the first customer in the book. The 4-business demo book runs daily in demo mode. The go-live gate is platform credentials and phone activation — operational steps, not code.
The moat
Vertical depth agents can sell.
Generic tools post; Cherry knows menus, locations, review compliance and local SEO. Approval-first builds the trust agencies never earn. MCP-native means AI assistants become a sales channel, not a threat. And the self-hosted cost base lets us price at $99 where agencies need $1,500.
Pre-seed conversation — open now.
Q4 2026 is the investment quarter. Funds go to phone activation of the mapped 1,000-lead pipeline, the platform-credential go-live, and the first 25 doors at $199. Data room on request.
Request the data room
