The concept of the so called ghost kitchen attracts old and new investors. With the money, the founders want to push ahead with the Europe wide expansion.
Getting food delivered is part of everyday life for modern city dwellers. Such as the coffee to go or checking the Twitter account on the way to work. According to consumer and media analysis, VuMA orders over 19 million people one or more times a month Food at a delivery service. Today sushi, tomorrow pizza, Indian the day after tomorrow? Lieferando, Foodora & Co make it possible and bring the food to the front door. Behind it are above all convenience, lack of time or simply the desire for more variety on the plate.
The Berlin startup Keatz, which was able to collect twelve million euros in a Series A financing round. It was possible with the concept of the so called ghost kitchen, also benefits from this trend.
Kitchens in all major European cities in planning
On board are the former shareholders Atlantic Food Labs, the Berlin venture capitalist Project A, JME Ventures and K Fund from Spain as well as the Italian VC Ustart. New is the Russian investor RTP Global. Which is already involved in the Indian food on demand company founded in 2011, Rebel Foods. In May of last year Keatz had already collected six million euros.
The fresh capital is to flow into the Europe wide expansion, so co-founder Paul Gebhardt on request of WirtschaftsWoche founder. According to him, they plan to open kitchens in all major European cities over the next 18 months, around 100 are planned. Currently, the focus is still on Spain, the Netherlands, England and Germany.
Keatz operates so called Ghost kitchens also called Cloud Kitchen. And registers completely on their own restaurants. Instead, meals are offered exclusively through delivery services such as Deliveroo, Delivery Hero, UberEats and Glovo. Currently, the startup maintains kitchens in Berlin, Munich, Amsterdam, Madrid and Barcelona. And employs around 200 people plus 30 office workers in Berlin, Amsterdam and Madrid. In the course of the expansion, the hiring of additional employees is planned, said Gebhardt.
The extradition of the courts was outsourced
The company, founded by Paul Gebhardt and Dimitrios Ploutarchos, started in 2016 as a salad service’GreenGuru. At that time, they also took care of the delivery. But quickly realized that the balancing act between logistics and production of food is very difficult.
As a result, after a successful round of financing of over 2.2 million euros Keatz relied entirely on the establishment of digital food brands. And outsourced the delivery via external platforms such as Deliveroo and UberEats. Keatz claims to earn between 10 and 20 percent of an order. Their goal in the future is to increase the automation of kitchens to at least 30 percent.