A look back at 2025: the First Bite community by the numbers

As we settle into 2026, we’ve had some space to reflect on all that happened for First Bite in 2025. It was a year of rapid growth, from our platform expansion to our product enhancements. And that pace is only accelerating in 2026.

Of course, we couldn’t have gotten here without our incredible customers and hard-working team. We invite you to take a look back at 2025 with us, and to celebrate the wins all members of the First Bite community experienced last year.

The First Bite user community grew bigger and made the most of the platform

In 2025, we saw hundreds of new users join the First Bite community across dozens of businesses, ranging in scale from small emerging brands to publicly traded companies. Some left behind spreadsheets, others left behind legacy software. 100% of our customers launched outbound campaigns, added to their funnels, and saved time on repetitive tasks!

We rolled out new features to make First Bite the favorite tool for foodservice sales teams

It was a big year for expanding our offerings, with 2025 marking the launch of our enterprise-grade CRM, complete with automations, collaboration tools, and sample management features. It’s purpose-built for foodservice sales professionals, and it comes pre-populated with our operator dataset.

Speaking of that dataset, it expanded in 2025 to include information for three entirely new categories: healthcare, convenience, and hotels and lodging, bringing us up to data on 1.5M+ operators and locations across the U.S.

Our other big product launch was our Rebates & Rewards platform, the first digital restaurant loyalty and rebates management platform. Finally, foodservice sales teams have a way to build custom offers that convert and track the ROI of each initiative.

And we completely rebuilt our customer onboarding program to ensure everyone on the First Bite platform was getting the most out of these new features. Every single team that signs up for First Bite gets hands-on support to launch an automated outbound prospecting email core competency in 60 days. From team training to tech stack, we provide an entire program to reduce time to value and get them to their first successful campaign ASAP.

We also made it easier for sales teams to collaborate, with each other and across other tools

As our product expanded, it afforded us more opportunities to break down silos that can hinder teamwork and slow workflows.

First up were email platform integrations. Customers can now link their First Bite account with any email provider, making it easier than ever to activate the work done in their CRM and turn it into cold outreach campaigns.

We also launched full product and SKU management along with an integration to Syndigo that allows customers to track all products at the SKU level within the First Bite ecosystem.

Our Document Library empowers teams to create a shared repository for all their sales collateral, and makes it easy for them to track outputs, identify content gaps, and share the right documents with prospects.

The Sample Management feature helps teams track the sample send and follow-up process. Now everyone can see how long it’s been since anyone on the team has reached out after sending a sample to ensure no leads fall through the cracks.

And in the spirit of collaboration with our customers, we launched our Help Center, which connects First Bite users with faster answers about how to make the most of the platform.

All those updates yielded great results for customers

Our customers were eager to try our new features and tools, and wow, did they see some results. In 2025, First Bite customers used the platform to surface contact information for more than 100k contacts, nearly 10x over the previous year. 

‍They also sent almost 1 million emails to those contacts, reaching out across multiple channels: bars and restaurants, hospitals, hotels, colleges and universities, convenience stores, and K-12 schools. And those emails became leads and sales, with a >7% average response rate across the platform.

The First Bite team grew, and we announced our first acquisition

To support our growing user base and new offerings, our team expanded in 2025. We added 11 full-time team members.

We also announced our acquisition of Pantry AI, a startup leveraging AI to transform how manufacturers capture and act on fragmented data across their sales ecosystem, and with that acquisition added Pantry AI’s co-founder to the First Bite team to lead the development of intelligent automation features.

What’s ahead in 2026

We expect the coming year to be just as exciting for First Bite and its customers.

In the near term, keep an eye out for huge updates on the platform, starting with a new UI, which launched today! We’re also hard at work expanding our list of data types and incorporating new agentic workflows into our platform. More on that in the coming months, too.

The next iteration of our Rebates platform is also just around the corner. Expect to see an operator-facing product that allows manufacturers to build, share, and manage customized loyalty offerings with its customers.

‍And finally, we launched a white glove referral program. If you love First Bite, tell your friends and colleagues about it. When you do, we will take care of both of you, you can earn platform credits and other perks (like date night on us!). If you know a company that should be using First Bite you can connect us to, email us, and we will take it from there!