Deals · FoodTech / RegTech
Biorsaf raises €5.2M and acquires Cooki to build Italy's first end-to-end food compliance platform
A Tuscany-based platform that digitises food safety, quality, and compliance processes for the hospitality and food industry — automating HACCP controls, traceability, workplace safety, and water quality management via its BS-Safe software.
“This new funding round and the acquisition of Cooki accelerate Biorsaf's growth. In just three years, we have built Italy's reference platform for automating food compliance, and we are ready for the next development stage.”
Biorsaf (Tuscany) has closed a €5.2 million funding round led by P101 SGR, the Italian venture capital firm, with continued backing from Maia Ventures, Farming Future — the national technology transfer hub for AgriFood tech — and Toscana Next. Simultaneously, the company is acquiring Cooki, a Bologna-based platform for digital management of food information, in a move it says creates Italy's first operator able to cover every stage of food compliance in a single solution.
Founded in 2021 in Castell'Azzara, Grosseto, Biorsaf develops BS-Safe: a vertical software platform that automates food safety (HACCP), workplace safety, and water quality management. Its user base has grown to 10,000 active clients, including restaurant groups Gruppo Cigierre and Compagnia Generale Ristorazione, and large-scale retail operators such as Conad. The company claims its software saves an estimated 30 minutes of work per user per day and cut operating costs by €30 million across active users in 2025.
The acquisition rationale
Cooki, founded in 2017 by Giuseppe Grammatico, operates across more than 450 Italian cities, with over 1,000 users and a database of more than 35,000 coded products. Its platform automates traceability, labelling, food costing, stock management, and allergen risk management — functions adjacent to but distinct from Biorsaf's HACCP focus. Together, the combined platform is positioned to cover the full compliance value chain, from the moment raw ingredients arrive at a kitchen door to when a dish is served and documented.
The strategic logic is straightforward: food operators are sceptical of switching compliance software once embedded in their operations. A platform that automates the entire chain, rather than one stage of it, creates a stickier product and a larger initial sale. Farming Future's re-participation from the November 2024 round provides a signal of sector validation; P101 SGR's lead is the first institutional commitment from an Italian generalist VC.
The market and the plan
Italy's food compliance market represents roughly 3.4 million businesses and €12 billion in annual revenue, with estimated digitisation penetration of just 3%. Biorsaf's CEO Marco Papalini frames this as the headroom that makes the company's three-year plan credible: a sector this underdigitised does not require Biorsaf to win market share from established competitors — it requires converting paper-based operators who have never bought software at all.
The capital will fund AI platform development (the company is building a professional AI agent dedicated to digital food safety management), a hiring push from 40 to 120 employees in the next 18 months, and further acquisitions. That pace — tripling the team in a year and a half while integrating a new product — is the primary execution risk. Biorsaf's existing client base and Maia Ventures' Italian food network provide some commercial floor. Whether the headcount growth happens without diluting the platform's product quality is the question P101 SGR has bet it can manage.
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