Tiffany Rogers wanted a permanent home for her catering business. Jay Freeman planned to expand an existing restaurant. Latisha Clark hoped to pursue her passion for feeding people. One by one, the chefs found their way to Carnegie Food Hub, a CloudKitchens facility in Cleveland’s MidTown neighborhood. They were drawn in by a proposition of …
Continue reading “AT A CLEVELAND CLOUDKITCHENS, OPERATORS SAY THEY WERE SET UP TO FAIL”
Eric Roldan had always wanted to open a restaurant. Drawing on his Puerto Rican heritage, the menu would feature plantain-based dishes like jibaritos and mofongo. It would also have a mojito bar. He’d always envisioned it as a sit-down place. But then Roldan’s business partner told him about CloudKitchens, a company that rents kitchen space …
Continue reading “CLOUDKITCHENS SOLD THESE RESTAURANTS A DREAM. WHAT THEY GOT WAS A NIGHTMARE”
Franklin Junction is expanding its partnership with Hooters and Nathan’s Famous, two of the company’s incoming brands cooked and packaged for delivery inside existing restaurant kitchens. In revising its partnership, Hooters will serve as one of Franklin Junction’s first “dual partners,” entering new markets as what it calls a “cloud concept” with a goal of …
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With a spicy announcement decrying the influence of “food tech bros” in the delivery space, OOMI Digital Kitchen is a new ghost kitchen opening this month in Dallas, led by the founder of Urban Taco. The new ghost kitchen aims to define what it calls the second wave of the category with a focus on food …
Continue reading “Decrying Influence of ‘Tech Bros,’ OOMI Digital Kitchen Launches in Dallas”
Tech Tracker rounds up what’s happening in the technology sector of the restaurant industry, including news from restaurants, vendors, digital platforms, and third-party delivery companies. This month, our main story comes from an interview with Kitchen United CEO Michael Montagano, who gave some insight into the ghost kitchen company’s recent $100 million fundraising round, with …
For some budding restauranteurs, CloudKitchens might sound like a great opportunity to get off the ground. The service, owned by Uber founder and ex-CEO Travis Kalanick, promises restaurateurs delivery-only kitchens in rented warehouse spaces with low startup fees. But a report from Insider reveals that many CloudKitchens operators are struggling to keep their business alive due to a …
Continue reading “The Uber of ghost kitchens sucks, apparently”
Virtual restaurants are going through rapid evolutions as this subset of the restaurant industry matures. By focusing on operational simplicity, Catapult Concepts offers a new method of operating sub brands that the founder says is exceptionally easy and truly incremental. Founder and CEO Jake Schostak knows restaurants very well. He grew up in the restaurant …
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As more restaurants add virtual brands to their kitchens, Grubhub is joining the scrum with a delivery-only concept of its own. MasterChef Table was created in partnership with contestants from the long-running cooking show of the same name. It will offer a menu of familiar foods with a “MasterChef spin,” the company said, though it …
Dive Brief: Forty-one percent of independent restaurants currently operate virtual brands to leverage persistent consumer delivery demand, according to a report commissioned by Grubhub and executed by Technomic, which surveyed 350 independent operators from Jan. 20-28, 2022. Sixty-eight percent of survey respondents report their virtual restaurants are permanent additions, and 46% plan to open three or more …
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Forward Kitchens was working quietly on its digital storefront for restaurants and is now announcing a $2.5 million seed round. Raghav Poddar started the company two years ago and was part of the Y Combinator Summer 2019 cohort. Poddar told TechCrunch he has been a foodie his entire life. Lately, he was relying on food delivery …
