It will also be interesting to see how Kitopi fits in the broader ghost and cloud kitchen space, which has recently gained traction. Without a dine-in portion of the restaurant to worry about, which carries overhead costs associated with waitstaff, operational costs, and more, brands can improve their margins. In 2019, Travis Kalanick, Uber co-founder and former CEO, has quietly gained investors in its CloudKitchens business, which rents out kitchens to restaurants and operates its own delivery-only restaurants. Kitchen United, another shared kitchen operation, secured additional funding last year and plans to expand throughout the U.S. in the coming years.
Kitopi to expand its cloud kitchen services after raising $60m in Series B funding
Download File: https://vittuv.com/2vGnNc
Kitopi, based in Dubai and New York, has 30 satellite kitchens across the U.S., United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom and Kuwait, and it plans to open 50 locations in the U.S. and another 100 globally by the end of the year with the new series B funding led by Lumia Capital, an investor in online and mobile food ordering service EatStreet.
Kitopi is one of the leading cloud kitchen startups today offering a Kitchen as a Service (KaaS), with over $117M in funding to date after a $60M Series B early in 2020. Although it has pulled out of the US and UK markets due to the pandemic, it is exploring expansion in the Middle East and Southeast Asia along with another funding round to support these efforts. Maple was an earlier ghost kitchen operator that owned the food process from concept and cooking to delivery. The startup ceased operations early in 2017 and was acquired by the UK-based food delivery startup, Deliveroo.
Ghost kitchens sound pretty spooky, and the name doesn\u2019t really do much to explain what they actually do besides the fact that you\u2019re not meant to feel their presence. Though there are a number of business models and structures under the ghost kitchen umbrella, they center around a cooking facility that is not tied to a physical dining space or takeout restaurant; the food is only for delivery. The concept has taken off with the rise of third-party delivery services, and the pandemic has accelerated that growth with the demand for food delivery. The space was in a bit of a rough spot some years ago as many pioneering companies shut down, and only time will tell if ghost/cloud kitchens are here to stay and not just another Covid-era driven fad.
2ff7e9595c
Comments