Founder and former Uber CEO, Travis Kalanick, watched the food-delivery industry boom during the development of Uber Eats. Now he’s capitalizing on it via real estate with… Cloudkitchens.
How does real estate possibly extend, or even align with the food-delivery industry?
Enter CloudKitchens: a real estate company that provides smart kitchens for delivery-only restaurants.
Cloudkitchens provides restaurateurs with a physical space to prepare food– all without having to worry about maintaining a traditional brick-and-mortar location. Instead, food operators can go through platforms like Postmates, DoorDash, even UberEats. It saves capital and time. It is, per company mission, a “turnkey solution to delivery-only restaurants.”
There are many names for these kinds of spaces: virtual kitchens, dark kitchens, and, yes, even “ghost kitchens.”
And Cloudkitchens is leading the charge.
Of its meticulous design, Cloudkitchens has “everything about the restaurant experience is designed for walk-ins and reservations.” It is “reimagining an old model, expanding the brand and business without any compromises.” It highlights benefits such as “lower operational cost, lower upfront costs, and faster expansion.”
Founded in 2016, the Los Angeles-based company’s growth has been monumental. Saudi Arabia’s sovereign-wealth-fund invested $400 million in CloudKitchens, valuing the company $5 billion. This made the company a unicorn five times over. Not bad…
The company’s development strategy allows investors to participate in a new market. A market being reshaped by the rise of digital technology.
Online food-delivery offers more choices and accessibility. And it can all be done in a few taps of consumers’ phones.
As further evidence of this approaching disruption, A 2018 UBS Investment Bank report titled “Is The Kitchen Dead?” estimated that the $35 billion food delivery economy could grow tenfold within a decade. This will allow for virtual kitchens to play a major role in the disruption of the restaurant industry.
What do you think about the rise in the virtual kitchen? Are you here for it? Or do you want to preserve the traditional mom and pop restaurant experience? Tweet your opinion to @StarterNoise with #SNCloudKitchens to be retweeted! And be sure to stay in the loop with industry news on our site!
