Just Eat Takeaway.com founder Jitse Groen invests in Butlaroo
Butlaroo has secured a multi-million-euro investment from Jitse Groen, founder of Just Eat Takeaway.com. It is the first external investment in the company's history.
EINDHOVEN - 24 August 2026. Eindhoven-based technology company Butlaroo, known for QR-code ordering in the hospitality industry, has secured a multi-million-euro investment from Jitse Groen, founder of Just Eat Takeaway.com. Groen will acquire a minority stake in the scale-up, which is based in Brainport Eindhoven, one of the Netherlands' fastest-growing technology hubs.
It is the first external investment in the company's history. Butlaroo was founded in 2014 by brothers Daniël and Lucas Duwaer. The idea was born in a restaurant, where the brothers noticed how much effort it could take to get a waiter's attention and place another order.
Butlaroo has since grown into an ordering and payment platform that allows guests at restaurants, hotels and holiday parks to order and pay easily via QR codes, self-service kiosks and online. The platform now digitalises almost every part of the process, from ordering and payment to loyalty.
“The next step is to bring all the different ways people order and pay together into one smart system,” says Daniël Duwaer, founder and CEO of Butlaroo. “Online retailers have been using technology this way for years to keep improving how they sell. We are bringing that same approach to hospitality.”
A shared vision for innovation.
For Butlaroo, Jitse Groen's investment brings more than funding alone. Groen built Thuisbezorgd.nl from a Dutch start-up into Just Eat Takeaway.com, a global publicly listed company. His experience in scaling a technology company internationally will support Butlaroo in its next phase of growth.
“Butlaroo is a fast-growing tech company that has shown its approach works at scale,” says Jitse Groen. “They solve real problems for businesses and consumers while building something that will significantly change this market. That innovation is what makes it interesting.”
Expansion.
With the new funding, Butlaroo will invest heavily in its technology. Further expansion across Europe and beyond is high on the agenda.
“Over the past ten years, we have built Butlaroo into an international platform used by millions of consumers across fifteen countries, without external funding,” continues Daniël Duwaer. “With Jitse Groen on board, we are taking the next step in our growth. Our stories have a lot in common. Jitse fundamentally changed the way people order food at home; we are doing the same inside restaurants. Now we are going to roll out that approach on a much larger scale.”
AI as a growth engine for hospitality.
Every digital order tells us something about the guest: what they look at, what they order and when they come back. Butlaroo uses those insights to help restaurants automatically improve sales and operate more efficiently.
“When people think of hospitality, they often still picture paper menus and manual processes,” says Daniël. “But that image is outdated. More and more guests now order and pay digitally. With AI, we can learn from that behaviour and automatically respond better to what guests want.”
About Butlaroo.
Butlaroo is a Dutch technology company that enables guests to order and pay at restaurants via QR codes, self-service kiosks and online ordering. The platform is used daily by thousands of hospitality businesses, processes hundreds of millions of euros in order value and has millions of users.
About Jitse Groen.
Jitse Groen founded Thuisbezorgd.nl in 2000, which grew into Just Eat Takeaway.com, one of the world's largest food delivery platforms. He stepped down as CEO on 1 January 2026. His investment in Butlaroo is his first since leaving the company.