CloudKitchens Spends Big on 40 New Properties
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...
Kroger, ClusterTruck Expand Ghost Kitchen Partnership
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...
Testing Third-Party Convenience Stores
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...
FOD Tests Dream Dinners’ Pivot into Meals-by-Mail
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...
Funding Still Pouring into Food On Demand Space
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...
Apex Says Less is More in Delivery/Takeout Racks
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...
Delivery Q&A with Panda Express
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...
UK’s Camile Thai Delivering by Drones in Ireland
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...
Bahia Bowls Finds Food Cost, Lean Labor the Key to Profitable Delivery
It’s not every day a 19-year-old starts a franchise restaurant. It’s similarly uncommon for a new restaurant brand’s first franchisees to find themselves building their first stores just as the pandemic began to shut down the world around them. For Florida-based Bahia...
Outstanding Operators
Food On Demand Outstanding Operators features restaurant brands with innovative operations that are taking creative paths to success with delivery and all things off-premises.