Adilet Zakiyev is the CEO and co-founder of Kazakhstani tech startup Resti. Having spent over a decade in the hospitality industry—founding CrepeCafe (growing to 9 branches and over 350 staff, according to Forbes Kazakhstan) and dark kitchen chain YouMeSushi—he partnered with technical co-founder Daniyar Nurmukhamet to build an artificial intelligence platform automating restaurant back-office operations. In May 2026, Resti secured venture backing from 500 Global in Eurasia. According to Zakiyev, by July 2026 the startup had raised a total of $200,000 in early-stage capital, though specific transaction terms with 500 Global were not publicly disclosed.
Executive Summary: Adilet Zakiyev and Resti
| Attribute | Details |
|---|---|
| Role | CEO & Co-Founder of Resti |
| Background Prior to Resti | 10+ years in restaurant business; founded CrepeCafe (9 locations, 350+ employees) and dark kitchen network YouMeSushi |
| Technical Co-Founder | Daniyar Nurmukhamet (CTO & Co-Founder) |
| Key Institutional Investor | 500 Global in Eurasia (May 2026); valuation and check size undisclosed |
| Angel Backer | Nariman Shakabayev (Owner of Hani Cakes & Coffee) — converted from client to investor |
| Core Product | Resti: AI-driven SaaS platform managing restaurant inventory, procurement, and recipe unit economics |
| Client Footprint | Over 300 active restaurant outlets as of July 2026 |
| Corporate Entity | Resti LLP, BIN 240340018597; registered in Astana on March 15, 2024 |
The Core Problem: Why Restaurant Back-Offices Leak Cash
While frontline point-of-sale (POS) systems like iiko, Paloma365, and Quick Resto manage front-of-house customer billing, restaurant back-office operations remain notoriously archaic across Central Asia. Chefs and procurement managers spend hours handwriting paper supplier invoices, manually keying line items into accounting software, and guessing daily food spoilage.
Resti solves this pain point through automated computer vision and natural language processing. A kitchen manager snaps a photo of a handwritten or printed paper supplier receipt with a smartphone. Resti’s OCR pipeline instantly digitizes item names, weights, prices, and tax rates, automatically reconciling them against culinary recipe cards and live warehouse stock levels.
Predictive Demand and Dynamic Menu Engineering
Beyond invoice digitization, Resti employs predictive machine learning models that correlate past sales velocity, seasonal temperature swings, public holidays, and local foot traffic patterns to generate automated daily purchase orders. This prevents both under-stocking popular dishes during weekend rushes and over-ordering perishable produce that ends up discarded.
By scaling to over 300 active food-service establishments across Astana and Almaty, Resti demonstrates that specialized vertical SaaS, built by founders who personally survived restaurant operational chaos, represents one of the fastest-growing niches in Kazakhstan’s B2B tech ecosystem.
