Innovation Heroes: Inspiring ideas from two ambitious food & beverage businesses

In his influential 1985 article The Discipline of Innovation, the famed management consultant Peter F. Druker stated that "Innovation is the specific function of entrepreneurship…..It is the means by which an entrepreneur either creates new wealth-producing resources or endows existing resources with enhanced potential for creating wealth." Drucker's ideas still hold true.

For most food & beverage businesses the focus is on creating efficiencies or enhancing existing services to generate more revenue, something that a payments platform can assist with. This is even more important for ambitious local players, and we're often brought in to support these initiatives.

In our Innovation Heroes series, we look to highlight entrepreneurial brands with big ambitions. Brands that collaborate with us to inspire their innovation, improve their payments processes, and, in turn, fuel their growth. We recently caught up with two in the food & beverage sector.

• Bagels & Beans a well-known Dutch cafe chain focused on natural products and socially responsible food.

• Beets & Roots is a German fast-casual restaurant that focuses on healthy food of the highest quality.

The two have more in common than an ampersand, they're both high growth companies thriving in an ultra-competitive industry at a difficult time. Here, we've tried to condense their learnings into three key focus areas for burgeoning food & beverage entrepreneurs.