A food tech startup building smart satellite kitchen networks has raised £3 million in seed funding.
Growth Kitchen, based in London, raised the money from a group of strategic investors led by PactVC.
It includes the co-founders of German unicorn and on-demand grocery delivery company Gorillas – Ronny Shibley, Jörg Kattner and Felix Chrobog – with the latter also having formerly served as GM for Deliveroo.
The round also featured TwinklHive CEO, Jonathan Seaton and Robert Laurence, CEO of Resolution Property. Shibley and Seaton were additionally appointed to the board of directors.
This investment is helping Growth Kitchen continue to crack the delivery kitchen model, where restaurants can scale like a SaaS company, while remaining the exclusive owner of their business.
By leveraging technology and data science, restaurant brands are able to grow from a few kitchens to 100s of strategic and sustainable, high-volume locations across Europe.
“In a world where we take Ubers and watch Netflix, we’ve accepted cooking as the norm for too long. Building on the success of food delivery apps, we are introducing a step change in how we eat,” said Máté Kun, co-founder of Growth Kitchen.
“We transform high-order-volume restaurants into delivery powerhouses by making it very easy for them to scale through our satellite kitchen network.”
Growth Kitchen has already partnered with restaurant brands in London, including Tortilla, Tai Kitchen and The Athenian, across two hubs that support 20+ restaurants.
The company is on track to open 40 new hubs within the next two years across the UK and key European markets, making it the default growth partner for high-delivery-volume restaurants across Europe.
“With technology and data at their fingertips, our restaurant partners are becoming fully delivery optimised, providing a consistent, affordable experience to their customers, in a sustainable way and in an environment where employees actually want to come to work,” continued Kun.
“We are thrilled to receive support from pioneers in the food delivery industry such as Ronny, creators of future-proof real estate, like Robert and those leaders disrupting the way we use technology, such as Jonathan. With this backing, we have been able to build a team and establish ourselves as the preferred partner of the best delivery restaurants.”
Shibley said: “What Growth Kitchen brings to the table is the natural evolution of food. Where Gorillas can deliver groceries to your door in 10 minutes, the logical next step would be to go into restaurant food.
“Within five minutes of visiting one of Growth Kitchen’s hubs, I knew I had finally found the team that had cracked the delivery kitchen model. They have the tech to find and operate across strategic locations, a steady flow of drivers coming in and out, while attracting top food brands who don’t churn and want to keep scaling with them.”