Meet the entrepreneurs turning restaurant delivery into airport food
As evidenced by DoorDash and Uber’s foray into ghost kitchens to compete with Cloud Kitchens, more tech companies are inching their way towards becoming modern day restaurateurs, a skill for which they have no proven competency– yet. However, there are two companies taking it a step further through a new approach they’re calling “franchising 2.0.”
Following the recent announcement of the $400mm investment from the Saudi Public Investment Fund into Cloud Kitchens, another startup, Virtual Kitchen Co, announced its $15mm investment last week led by Andressen Horowitz (and an additional $35mm of debt to purchase and convert properties into virtual infrastructure). The company is founded by ex-Uber employees and is attempting to apply a virtual franchising model to food delivery. They are betting that national brands will entrust them to cook their best-selling items on third-party delivery platforms in markets where there’s untapped demand in exchange for a single-digit percentage royalty fee. It’s a foodservice model that’s been pioneered by the likes of Aramark and Sodexo for campuses and OTG for airports. As anyone who’s eaten at an airport version of a restaurant can attest, these outlets are not 1:1 with the experience you would normally have at an owned and operated location. Foodservice companies source commodity…
