In this age of thriving startups, you might have come across the term virtual kitchens or cloud kitchens. If one is familiar with the terms then they probably know that businesses following these type of kitchen models have no outlet to serve customers. Instead, the primary focus here is on the preparation and delivery of food to customers.
There are many successful startups that are based on the same model and one of them, a Berlin-based startup Keatz has raised €12 million in fresh funding. The promising startup previously raised €7 million in funding, in May last year. Here are five things you should know about Keatz.
What is Keatz?
Let’s get to know a little bit about the thriving new startup. Keatz describes itself as a family of virtual restaurants, which makes food that is especially for delivery. Its headquarter is situated in Berlin, where it coordinates all of its national and international kitchens. The company launched into the online food delivery space back in spring 2016 and has expanded to a total of 10 virtual restaurants, which are located in Berlin, Munich, Madrid, Amsterdam and Barcelona. The startup was founded by Dimitrios Ploutarchos and Paul Gebhardt.
Who backed the budding startup?
While Keatz previously secured €7 million of funding in May last year, it has raised €12 million in its latest round of fundings. The latest rounds were backed by the company’s existing investors; Atlantic Food Labs, UStart, Project A Ventures, K Fund and JME ventures, joined by RTP Global.
What’s next for Keatz?
Like most startups, Keatz wants to expand its services with the freshly infused funds. The startup has bold ambitions of opening another 100 kitchens in more European countries. However, that’s not all. The cloud kitchen service wants to completely automate its kitchens. To such an extent that the appliances it uses be connected to the internet and are operated by robots. This is said to help in less wastage of food and lower need for manpower in the long run. Currently, the startup has about 200 employees.
A brief look at the concept of virtual/ghost/cloud kitchens
Most of us know about food delivery aggregator platforms like Zomato and Deliveroo. These apps act as a mediator between users and provide them access to a wide variety of restaurants. The virtual kitchen is a slightly different concept as the restaurants you see have no dine-in facility and concentrate only on delivering food to the customers.
The cloud kitchen business usually operates on a hub and spokes model. This means there’s a central kitchen where food is prepared and is delivered to cloud kitchens, which are located in different areas. As one might have guessed, operating cost and space required for a cloud kitchen are considerably lesser than opening a full-fledged restaurant.
Who are Keatz’s competitors?
As we described, the virtual kitchen business is quite lucrative with low investment cost and a relatively higher return. There are several competitors who are vying for a chunk of the same market as Keatz. Most notable competition to Keatz currently would be Deliveroo and Honest Food, both of which also operate virtual kitchens. While Deliveroo is a big player that recently introduced delivery-only kitchens called Deliveroo Editions, Honest Foods is a budding startup like Keatz.
Stay tuned to Silicon Canals for more updates in the tech startup world.
Image Credits: European countries
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