A technology company that happens to make incredible food

Rebuilding the restaurant from first principles.

Data-first. Software-driven. We turn the physical world digital, and engineer kitchens that deliver more happiness, to more people, than this industry has ever managed.

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Mission ControlHQ OPERATIONS, REAL-TIME
LIVE · 8 LOCATIONS
Total orders0▲ +11.2% WoW
Order / labor hr0.0zone 4.5–6.5
Error rate0.0%▼ −22.7% WoW
Star rating0.00▲ +0.8% WoW
SALES TREND, THIS WEEK– – LAST WEEK
AVONDALE · ON TRACK COMMERCE · ON TRACK FORT WORTH · SCALING+5 MORE
3 yrs
Perfecting one kitchen before scaling
1 → 8
Locations, and counting
3–4×
Revenue growth along the way
2–4×
Faster to break even than traditional

The Mission

Deliver happiness to as many people as possible.

That's not a slogan, it's an optimization target. And like any serious target, it has a formula.

Happinesswhat we maximize=Value Deliveredwhat you experience−Price Paidwhat it costs you

Economists call it consumer surplus. We call it the only scoreboard that matters: how much more value we put in your hands than the price you paid for it.

Why a formula?

Most restaurants run on intuition, tradition, and hope. We think that's why most of them fail. When your mission is measurable, every decision, every recipe, every process, every line of code, can be judged by one question: did this create more surplus for the customer?

Efficiency isn't about cutting corners. It's about producing more output with less input, then handing the difference back to the people we serve.

What surplus looks like

The free sauce we never charge for. The handwritten note with your name on it. The order that arrives faster and more accurate than it has any right to be. Small, unexpected moments stacked on top of honest value, what we call the moments in between.

Goodwill compounds like interest. We'd rather grow brand love than nickel- and-dime a customer, every single time.

Founder Story

I grew up inside the problem we're solving.

My family owned restaurants. Which means I grew up in the back of one, and I saw what this industry does to the people inside it.

It was chaos, every single day. High stress, thin margins, no systems, no room to breathe. My parents would come home at night arguing, not because they didn't love each other, but because the restaurant squeezed everything out of them and gave so little back. As a kid, that hurt me deeply. Honestly, it scarred me. I swore I would never set foot in this industry.

Then, in 2021, delivery changed everything, and I saw an opening. Not to run a restaurant the way my family had to, but to rebuild the entire model from scratch: data instead of guesswork, systems instead of stress, technology carrying the load so people don't have to carry it alone.

I didn't come back to this industry because I loved it. I came back because I knew exactly what was broken, and I knew it didn't have to be that way. We spent three years in one kitchen getting the model right. Then one location became eight, and we're just getting started.

Happy Holdings exists to reshape, rebuild, and redefine the restaurant, so the people who feed everyone else can finally be proud of where they work, and so the families behind the counter never have to carry what mine did.

“I didn't return to restaurants because I loved the industry. I returned because I knew exactly what was broken.”
Wesley Li, Founder, Happy Holdings Group
Wesley Li speaking on stage alongside Travis Kalanick, founder of Uber and ATOMS

On stage

Building with the people scaling digital food.

Wesley speaking on a panel with Travis Kalanick, founder of Uber and ATOMS. We partner with the companies built to scale the digital food space, learning from them and building alongside them as we grow.

Wesley Li (left), Founder of Happy Holdings Group

How We Operate

We turn the physical world digital.

Ninety percent of restaurants fail because they inherit how things have always been done. We instrument every inch of the kitchen, put a number on everything that matters, and let the data make the call.

01

Measure everything

Every part of the operation flows into live dashboards. If it matters to the customer, it has a number, and someone watching it.

02

Question everything

The restaurant industry runs on inherited habits. We run on first principles. Every “rule” gets tested against data, and the ones that don't survive get deleted.

03

Build, test, scrap

We build our own software and AI tools, ship them in weeks, and kill anything that adds drag. Technology has to earn its place on the line.

04

Automate the repetitive

Robotics and AI take the rote work so our people can do the work that actually matters: quality, hospitality, and judgment.

05

Data-driven people

Every team member sees their own numbers, prep times, accuracy, output, and competes with who they were yesterday. Excellence here is measured, not guessed.

06

Move with urgency

Decisions get made today, with the best data we have, and improved tomorrow. Speed of iteration beats perfection of planning.

The Software

We didn't buy our edge. We built it.

A restaurant is a supply and demand problem. The traditional answer is one building, one brand, and a schedule guessed at a week ahead. Our software works both sides: creating demand across brands and channels, and flexing supply, capacity, labor, and prep, to meet it. Matching the two is where the margin comes from, and it is why we can keep opening kitchens.

Happy Dashboard

internal platform

Our command center. Every kitchen's performance in one place and up to the minute, so decisions get made on numbers instead of hunches.

Happy Kitchens

internal platform

The operating system on the line. It turns a chaotic kitchen into a calm, measured production system, and it tells us what capacity we actually have.

Automated Agentic Hiring Flow

in-house ai

Hiring runs itself right up to the point where judgment matters. Our managers spend their time with candidates who already fit, not with a stack of applications.

Agentic AI Teammates

wired to our data

AI agents wired into our own data. Anyone on the team can ask a question and get an answer in seconds, no analyst required.

HAPPY DASHBOARD LIVE, ALL LOCATIONS
Orders today0▲ vs last week
Orders / labor hr0.0safe zone 4.5–6.5
Error rate0.0%▼ target < 1%
Avg prep time6:42alert at 9:00
ORDERS BY HOURRETENTION FUNNEL: 1st → 10th ORDER

The Build-Out

We engineer the box, not just the bowl.

Every kitchen starts life as a drawing. Stations are standardized, equipment is placed by seconds saved, and the whole build is a playbook we can hand to a contractor in any market. When one site hit its ceiling, we knocked down a wall and added 50% more capacity, in two weeks.

HHG STANDARD KITCHEN, BUILD SHEET K-01 · REV 3SCALE 1/4" = 1'-0"
STORAGE PREP HEAT PACKOUT → CUSTOMER

Weeks, not months

From signed lease to first order in a fraction of a traditional restaurant's timeline. No dining room, no front-of-house, just a precision production line.

Same line, every market

One standardized layout means training transfers, playbooks transfer, and a new kitchen runs like the last one on day one.

Designed around the data

Station placement, walk paths, equipment counts, every choice traces back to throughput numbers from the kitchens already running.

The Trajectory

Three years to prove it. Eight in under two years.

We spent three years inside a single kitchen perfecting the model, unit economics, software, playbooks. Then we hit go: one location became eight in under two years, our revenue run rate tripled in the past year, and our kitchens reach break-even 2–4× faster than a traditional restaurant. Our best site did it 6× faster.

1
'22
1
'23
1
'24
4
'25
8
Now
20+
Next 12 mo

LOCATIONS, THREE YEARS PROVING IT, THEN 1 → 8 IN UNDER TWO YEARS

Traditional restaurant
1×
Happy Holdings, typical
2–4× faster
Happy Holdings, best
6× faster

SPEED TO BREAK-EVEN ON A NEW KITCHEN

DFW → HOUSTON → AUSTIN → SAN ANTONIO → ···

The next twelve months: 20+ locations across Texas and beyond, same playbook, faster execution.

Investors & Partners

wesley@happyholdingsgroup.com →

Core Values

The culture is the moat.

Technology can be copied. Recipes can be copied. A team that lives these six values every day cannot.

01

Care

Genuine care about the outcome is the root of everything, it can't be faked and it can't be trained. We hire people who care intrinsically, because every system we build sits on top of it.

02

Extreme Ownership

We own the result, full stop, even when the problem started outside our walls. No blame, no excuses. If a delivery driver is late, we ask what we could have done differently.

03

Competitive Greatness

We compete with who we were yesterday. One percent better every day, in skill, in detail, in craft, compounds into something nobody can catch.

04

Do The Right Thing

Integrity isn't situational. We act ethically even when it's expensive and nobody is watching.

05

People Matter

Happy teams make happy customers. Every system we build exists to make our people's work easier, calmer, and worth being proud of, because they're the reason any of this works.

06

Bias For Action

Paralysis by analysis kills more restaurants than bad food does. We act on incomplete information, learn fast, and iterate, because volume of action raises the odds of winning.

Our Concepts

Made with soul. Perfected with science.

Each of our brands is a living laboratory, a delivery-first concept where every dish is continuously tested, measured, and refined.

Bowls of Rice

Crave-worthy rice bowls engineered for delivery, built layer by layer to arrive hot, fresh, and exactly as ordered.

bowlsofrice.com →

Bunch of Dumplings

Handcrafted dumplings with obsessive consistency, comfort food held to an engineering standard.

bunchofdumplings.com →

Join Us

For operators who want to build, not firefight.

We tripled our revenue run rate in the past year, and we're going from eight kitchens to twenty-plus. We want leaders who want to shape the model, and we build the technology that clears the busywork out of their way.

What our software takes off a manager's plate

  • Sorting résumés and chasing no-showsYou meet a screened shortlist.
  • Guessing at labor until the P&L lands weeks laterYou see your numbers during the shift.
  • Clipboards, sticky notes, and paper prep listsThe admin happens in the app.
  • Finding out about a rough shift from a bad reviewYou catch problems before a guest does.
  • Writing the same recap in five placesThe reporting writes itself.

Less time on paperwork is more time on your team, your food, and your numbers. That efficiency is also why our kitchens reach break-even 2–4× faster and earn a return on invested capital 3–5× higher than a traditional restaurant, and why we can keep opening them.

HumbleHungrySmartYou genuinely care
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