Inspire Brands, the parent company of Arby’s, Sonic, Buffalo Wild Wings, Jimmy John’s and Rusty Taco, has signed an agreement with ItsaCheckmate, and also invested an undisclosed sum in the fast-growing, New York-based delivery integration software platform. This news came as Checkmate announced its latest fundraising haul, an $8 million Series B with four participating partners. While that seven-figure stack of cash would normally be the headline, the more consequential news is that one of the largest restaurant operators in the U.S. is putting its money where its mouth is […]
Hy-Vee, an employee-owned grocery chain that’s been a leader in convenience and off-premises realms, is rolling out Fast & Fresh convenience stores that give customers a wide range of grab-and-go and take-and-bake pickup options, along with more traditional meal kits, wood-fired pizza, sushi and a selection of produce, dairy, meat, bakery and pantry items. These upscale, uber-convenient outlets are the Midwestern equivalent of Pret a Mangers along the East Coast that give big-city customers the ability to grab a not-gross meal on the go. As Hy-Vee expands these Fast & […]
Recently revealed real estate documents provide another hint at what ghost-kitchen builder CloudKitchens has going on behind the scenes. According to The Wall Street Journal, CloudKitchens has gobbled up 40 properties across the country, spending more than $130 million on the real estate for its next growth surge. The ghost kitchen operator, led in part by Uber founder Travis Kalanick, has been on a growth tear by way of shell companies with the goal of adding many more locations across the country. According to a look at shell companies and […]
Ghost-kitchen operator ClusterTruck and grocery juggernaut Kroger have been expanding on a partnership that they first inked last year. Read our previous coverage on the partnership in which Kroger lent its branding to the Indianapolis-area ghost kitchen operator under the flag Kroger Delivery Kitchen, Powered by Kroger. The pair recently announced more new locations, including two locations in the middle of Kroger grocery stores. The first has already opened, and at 1,000 square feet of space, it’s the product of millions of orders worth of learning. “With our new footprint, […]
By Tom Kaiser and Nicholas Upton There’s nothing more convenient than doing nothing. One tiny step below that is opening a delivery app to plug in a convenience store order, now that so many third-party delivery services have added C-store delivery to their repertoires. To size up this newfound luxury, we checked out five options ranging from local stores to GoPuff and DoorDash’s new DashMart offering to see who offers the most convenient option of them all. Through our testing, we identified the fine line between a “curated” selection and […]
Dream Dinners can be a lifeline for busy parents and folks who want an easy dinner. In normal times, customers show up, prep a whole bunch of meals for the next few weeks and take them home. Of course, standing in a dinner-prep assembly line during a pandemic is not the safest way to take dinner stress out of one’s life. Instead of powering through and hoping for the best, the 70 Dream Dinners kitchens across the country took a close look at what it had: ingredient logistics, great-tasting food, […]
If you thought a global pandemic, potentially disruptive economic collapse or a tumultuous election would have slowed the investment in the food and mobility space, you’d be wrong. GoPuff announced another venture round on October 8. The delivery-only convenience store, that we just happened to test in our C-store trial, raised another $380 million in a round led by Accel and D1 Capital Partners (both are new round leaders for the company, though Accel invested in prior rounds). The sixth round of investment puts the total raised for the company […]
With so many meals leaving restaurants by customer pickup and delivery drivers, one might think the pandemic has launched a gold rush of restaurant brands upgrading off-premises shelving to heated, frozen and cooled solutions. But not according to one leading manufacturer, who says the dwell time problem is typically best solved with better packaging and a more streamlined kitchen. This “less is more” approach—from a manufacturer of smart shelves that can text customers when their food is ready, no less—is at odds with Apex Order Technologies’ recent acquisition of Brightloom’s […]
A staple of the American Chinese food category with more than 2,200 locations, Panda Express made waves last summer by announcing plans for direct delivery through its Panda Delivers program. Those plans were accelerated by the pandemic, as the brand’s third-party delivery sales doubled, and included native customer delivery through its app and website. Below is an excerpt of a Q&A exchange with Nidhin Mattappally, executive director, digital and restaurant experience, and Evelyn Wah, executive director of brand innovation, for Panda Express. Their responses have been lightly edited for length. […]
After years of rumors and testing, the first non-beta drone deliveries of restaurant meals could take off this time next year through an ongoing partnership between Camile Thai and Manna, both based in Dublin, Ireland. Brody Sweeney, director at Camile Thai, said his franchised fast-casual restaurant chain has rounded a corner with its ongoing drone deliveries in Ireland. If all goes according to plan, as the drone testing moves from a tiny village into a larger city, Camile expects to exit beta testing and begin at-scale drone operations in the […]
