Close Ad

The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Restaurant Tech

Uber Just Made an Offer to Buy Postmates

Just weeks after it lost the chance to acquire Grubhub, Uber has made an offer to buy Postmates, according to the New York Times. 

Three sources “familiar with the matter” and speaking anonymously told the NYT that Uber could potentially buy its third-party delivery rival Postmates for $2.6 billion and that the deal was in talks right now — though it could also fall apart.

It wouldn’t be the first time a deal fell through for Uber. Only weeks ago, the company looked to be buying Grubhub to bolster its Eats business. Those plans went awry after Dutch food delivery service Just Eat Takeaway.com swooped in and made its own deal with Grubhub for $7.3 billion. 

Antitrust concerns were one of the main issues with an Uber-Grubhub deal. Had the two companies combined, the new entity would have created a delivery service with as much marketshare as DoorDash currently holds (45 percent of the U.S. market) and rendered the on-demand food delivery arena much less competitive.

A Postmates deal would raise fewer regulatory flags, since the Bay Area-based service, last valued at $2.4 billion, is a much smaller player than Grubhub.

Even so, consolidation is in full swing in the food delivery world. Besides Just Eat Takeaway.com’s deal with Grubhub, Delivery Hero recently bought South Korean service Woowa Bros. for $4 billion and Brazil-based iFood announced a merger with Colombian delivery heavyweight Domicillios.com.

Uber has said Eats will only operate in markets where it is the number one or number two player. In the U.S., that feat that would have been easy to accomplish with a Grubhub acquisition. Were a Postmates deal to go through, it’s less certain how dominant Uber Eats would be across the country, since Postmates holds considerably less market share than the other major players.

Domino’s Takes a Cue From Grocery With Its New Carside Delivery Feature

Mega pizza chain Domino’s today launched yet-another way for mobile order customers to retrieve their pies. “Domino’s Carside Delivery” is now available across the U.S., according to a company press release. 

The carside delivery option functions just as you would expect. It works only for those ordering via the Domino’s mobile app, right now between the hours of 4 p.m. and 9 p.m. Customers order and pay for their pizza, and also give their vehicle color, make, and model, which Domino’s will use to identify them when they arrive at the store. Customers also note where they want the order placed: trunk, back seat, etc. Upon arriving, they can hit the “I’m here” button on the Domino’s Tracker app and a staff will bring their pizza out. 

“It’s carryout, delivered,” Dennis Maloney, Domino’s senior vice president and chief innovation officer, said in today’s press release. 

But could it be simpler? Over in the grocery sector, major retailers like Safeway and Walmart have seen demand for their versions of carside pickup spike during the pandemic. My colleague Chris Albrecht has tried a bunch of them and found that Walmart’s is the fastest and simplest because of the geofencing technology the company adds to the pickup process. There is no number to call, no “I’m here” button to hit. Walmart’s system simply knows when you’ve arrived and alerts the staff so they can bring out your groceries.

Panera has also implemented geofencing for its curbside pickup process, which suggests there’s a future for it in the restaurant industry, especially with dining rooms closing again and off-premises still being the major lifeline for business.

One of the perks of geofencing technology is that restaurants (or grocers) can move more customers through faster. For Domino’s, that would translate into selling more pies. It could also help the chain better predict demand because geofencing would give it access to data that says how far people are traveling to get to the store, how long it takes them, etc.

Domino’s made no mention of geofencing tech in today’s announcement, but it would not be surprising to see the chain adopt it in the future to remove an extra step — the “I’m here” button — from the curbside process.

Ok so having to hit an “I’m here” button is not an actual problem to have in the grand scheme of things, which is to say, I doubt it will hinder customers from ordering carside via Domino’s. But the quest for simplicity in the curbside/carside pickup process grows every more important for restaurants, and before any technology around it gets standardized, we’ll see many different features claiming to be the simplest solution out there.

My Other Phone Is a Restaurant

The surprise hit story on The Spoon this week has been our recent post on Mexico City-based remotekitchen, a startup that’s building a mobile-first restaurant-tech platform that, theoretically at least, only needs a smart phone to operate. 

I highlight this story not because I think every restaurant needs to pare down their tech stack to a smartphone, but because now more than ever, restaurant tech companies need to ensure their products are offering real value to restaurants. In other words, they need to solve problems restaurants are having right now while also helping to prepare for the ones waiting for us in the future.

Remotekitchen’s platform solves some obvious problems for its core audience. Its founders explained to me that 96 percent of independent restaurants in Latin America are not online, that restaurant tech solutions are underdeveloped in the region, and that a vast majority of restaurant owners have to take orders via their own smartphones. The mobile-first approach also better equips operators to run virtual restaurants, which may be necessary depending on how high the coronavirus wave spikes.

The U.S. is not like Latin America when it comes to restaurant tech. We have choice and then some. Prior the pandemic, restaurant tech solutions included not just point of sale systems and self-serve kiosks, but also reservations management, wearable computing, virtual reality on boarding . . . the list goes on and on and on.

I don’t think restaurant tech companies should necessarily stop work on any of the above solutions, so long as they’re somehow helping restaurants solve the industry’s most urgent problems. Such as:

Improving restaurant pickup orders. For restaurants new to the off-premises world, juggling takeout and/or curbside pickup orders has proven challenging — to put it politely. Restaurants need more streamlined ways to both receive and deliver pickup orders to customers. (Geofencing, perhaps?)

Making restaurants more socially distant. I don’t refer to space between tables here. That is not a problem tech needs to solve. Menus, on the other hand, are. The number of simple digital menu solutions out there right now is encouraging, and many of them rely on simple signage or QR codes. And unlike chalkboards or disposable paper menus, digital menus could eventually become interactive tools for guests to learn more about the food they’re eating.

Enabling better communications with customers. This one is huge. Back when the pandemic first hit. I remember one restaurant telling me their customers didn’t even know they were open for takeout. Part of this is due to the rise of third-party delivery, which owns a lot of customer relationships. Delivery integrators are one way around this, as they allow restaurants to offer off-premises while still keeping their customer data.

These are just a few of the hot-button issues in the restaurant biz right now. I’m sure you have others, so drop us a line (tips@thespoon.tech) to let us know where you think restaurant tech will be the most valuable right now.

Restaurant Closures Underscore the Need for Off-Premises

The week, Yelp released new data about COVID-19’s continued impact on businesses, the restaurant industry included. The takeaway? A bunch of restaurants that have temporarily closed may never reopen.

Quite a lot of them, actually. 

As of June 15, roughly 140,000 businesses were listed on Yelp as closed. While retail got hit the hardest, restaurants came in at a close second, with 23,981 businesses closed. And here’s the kicker: more than half — 53 percent — of those restaurants currently closed won’t reopen, according to Yelp. 

“Restaurants run on thin margins and can sometimes take months or even years to break even, resulting in this higher rate of permanent closures,” Yelp explained in its update. 

This is aggravated by the rising number of COVID-19 cases across many states, which is causing governments to either delay reopening or order closures again. Some restaurants that had already reopened have to close once more because of employees becoming infected. 

Right now it’s incredibly hard to predict the total number of restaurants that will close permanently. Yelp’s numbers are actually smaller than a report by Independent Restaurant Coalition that said 85 percent of indie restaurants could close by the end of the year. Still, tens of thousands of restaurants is a lot of restaurants.

The lesson? First, that we’re going to be riding this will they-won’t they wave in terms of restaurant closures for a long time. Second, those that can, must continue finding ways to serve their customers with off-premises orders, even if their dining rooms have partially reopened. 

I’m All-In on Smart Vending Machines for Restaurants

On the note of restaurant tech that’s useful, The Spoon’s Editor recently did a report on the promise of automated vending machines in the foodservice world. I give it a shout out here because these next-generation machines, which serve up actual meals created by real chefs, could be the answer to getting good food in a socially distanced manner in many settings.

Consider the old mall food court, where you could mill between different restaurants and build your own smorgasbord of mediocre mall food. Digitizing as much of these very public spaces as possible will be necessary for sanitization and social distancing in the future. Since next-gen automated vending machines are basically their own little restaurant in a box, it’s possible we’ll one day head to food courts not manned by people but equipped with multiple machines from different brands offering increased choice without so much human interaction.

Given the way this pandemic is heading, smart vending machines could be a really smart idea.

This is the web version of our newsletter. Sign up today to get updates on the rapidly changing nature of the food tech industry.

Country Garden Opened a Massive Robot Restaurant Complex in China This Week

You may be debating whether or not you’re ready to go back into a restaurant. But what if that restaurant was operated entirely by robots? Would that make you more inclined to eat out?

Earlier this week, the Qianxi Robot Catering Group, a subsidiary of Country Garden, opened up a robot-powered restaurant complex in the city of Shunde in China’s Guangdong province.

The complex is 2,000 sq. meters (more than 21,000 sq. ft.) and serves Chinese, hot pot and fast food. The restaurant can serve 600 diners at once, offering 200 menu items that can be served up in as little as 20 seconds, according to the press announcement.

The complex has more than 20 robots developed in-house by Qianxi that cook up a variety of different styles including Chinese cuisine, clay pot rice and noodles. Though the press release doesn’t mention them specifically, from the accompanying photos, there is also a small army of pink server robots to bring dishes out to tables. No word on whether these were developed in-house as well, but they don’t look like the server robots make by PuduTech, Keenon or Bear Robotics.

Country Garden’s restaurant certainly isn’t the first to use robots. Spyce Kitchen in Boston uses robots to cook. Caliburger has Flippy grilling burgers. And Bear Robotics’ Penny server bot has been put to work shuttling food in restarants. But Country Garden seems to be among the first putting all of the front and back-of-house pieces together, and doing so at scale.

In addition to a having a bunch of robots, the Country Garden restaurant is also contactless, a factor increasingly important on our pandemic planet. As restaurants re-open here in the U.S., businesses and eater alike are grappling with restrictions like facemasks and socially distant tables. Having a full-on robot restaurant isn’t a guarantee to prevent the spread of COVID-19, but it does remove some human vectors from the equation.

It’s a question I’ve asked before, but what will make people more comfortable inside restaurants: the human touch while wearing a facemask and gloves, or the cold sterility of a robot?

Cheetah Now Lets You Buy Prepared Restaurant Meals with Your Groceries

At the height of the everybody-panic-grocery-shelves-are-bare phase of this pandemic, Bay Area-based startup Cheetah pivoted from selling food to restaurants to selling that same food directly to consumers. Today, Cheetah announced that it is going back to its roots, in a way, and selling prepared meals from restaurants.

Cheetah’s Restaurant Picks service is open to all restaurants in the Bay Area and is kicking off with Curry Up Now, Hummus Bodega, La Mediterranee, Tartine and Zero Zero SF to sell prepackaged meals through the Cheetah app. As with its grocery service, orders are picked up by customers at one of four locations around the Bay Area. Users are only able to order food from the restaurant in that pickup location (e.g., Curry Up Now meals are only available to people picking up food in the Inner Sunset neighborhood).

Unlike third-party delivery services, Cheetah is not charging a commission for its service, just the standard credit card processing fees.

The lines between restaurant and grocery stores were already blurring pre-COVID-19 as grocery stores offered an array of hot meals to take home. The pandemic not only decimated the restaurant industry, but also shut down that hot bar side of the business for grocers.

Cheetah’s Restaurant Picks take up the mantle of that blurring between grocers and restaurants, but just in a whole new direction. Cheetah went from connecting restaurants with wholesalers, to connecting consumers with wholesalers. In each of those cases, those connections helped keep businesses open and people fed. Now it is doing the same on the other side of the equation by giving restaurants a new revenue source directly from consumers.

With the pandemic showing no signs of slowing down here in the U.S., and Cheetah flush with recent funding, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Cheetah create even more connections across the restaurant meal journey.

Sevenrooms Raises $50M Series B Funding for Its Data-Driven Restaurant Tech Platform

Restaurant tech company Sevenrooms has raised $50 million in Series B funding. The round was led by Providence Strategic Growth and brings Sevenrooms’ total funding to $71.5 million. According to a press release sent to The Spoon, Sevenrooms will use the new funds to “further enhance” its restaurant guest-management platform as well as continue expanding globally. 

Sevenrooms, which was founded in 2011, has over time evolved from a reservations platform to a full suite of front-of-house tools that nowadays includes some pandemic-friendly features like contactless ordering and payments. The company continues to offer its reservations system, as well as waitlist and table management tools, marketing automation, and online ordering. Pre-pandemic, Sevenrooms was exploring voice-enabled restaurant tech as well as data-driven personalization.  

Like other front-of-house-focused restaurant tech companies, Sevenrooms quickly reacted to the COVID-19 crisis and the dining room shutdowns that followed. At no extra cost, it launched its DirectDelivery feature, which gives restaurants more ownership over their customers data on delivery order. The company also recently released its version of the contactless dining kit, meant to equip freshly reopened restaurant dining rooms with more contactless solutions, from order and pay technologies to digital menus. 

Others have made similar moves recently. In fact most restaurant tech companies — Presto, Zuppler, Paytronix, etc. — are offering enhancements to their platforms that emphasize contactless tools for the restaurant dining room.

Standing out from the masses will be the biggest challenge for all of these companies. Sevenrooms’ previous work around voice tech and personalization would give it a push in a somewhat unique direction. Its continued focus on giving restaurants more control over customer data will also be an important asset for the company going forward as digital properties become the restaurant experience, rather than an add-on sales channel.

Square Launches New Service So Restaurants Can Take Delivery Orders Directly

Payment processing company Square announced today the launch of its new On-Demand Delivery for its customers using the Square Online Store. The service allows restaurants and other sellers to take and fulfill delivery orders directly through their own websites, rather than going through a third-party delivery service.

Off-premises eating had been a growing portion of the restaurant industry’s revenue before the pandemic hit. Once restaurants were forced to close down dine-in operations out of COVID-19 concerns, delivery and curbside pickup became the only way restaurants could stay afloat.

But typically if restaurants want to offer delivery, they need to sign up for a third-party delivery service like DoorDash or Uber Eats. Those third-party delivery services charge high commissions and fees that basically gobble up most of the money a restaurant earns and drives up the price for consumers.

Square is letting restaurants bypass some reliance on those third-party delivery services by letting restaurants accept delivery orders directly on their own websites. From a Square blog post today announcing the new feature:

When an order is placed on the seller’s online store, a courier from the restaurant’s delivery partner is dispatched to the business location, picks up the order, and delivers it to the buyer. The buyer receives text updates with links to live maps to track delivery progress. Sellers pay a flat fee of $1.50 per order to Square, plus a fee to their delivery partner that is calculated in real-time based on distance and other factors. Sellers can pass this fee entirely to the buyer or offer custom delivery promotions. When applied across hundreds of delivery orders each month, sellers can save a significant amount on per-order costs.

There are some devils in these details. For instance, Square’s On-Demand delivery is now powered by Postmates, which itself a third-party delivery service (Square says more courier services will be added). Per Square, the restaurant is still paying Postmates a fee “based on distance and other factors.” The question then is, how much cheaper is it for a restaurant to take the delivery order directly and just use Postmates as a courier than it is to take orders via Postmates? Because part of what you pay for with a third-party delivery service is access to their large marketplace of customers looking for something to eat. Will abandoning third-party services save enough money?

Regardless, this is another example of the continuing evolution of the restaurant industry trying to navigate this pandemic and beyond. Third-party delivery services were a hero, then the villain. Restaurants that had once outsourced delivery are now looking to bring it back in-house, or create some type of hybrid solution.

Square’s On-Demand feature is more fuel for even more change.

U.K. Regulators Grant Provisional Clearance to Amazon’s Highly Scrutinized Deliveroo Investment

The U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has provisionally cleared Amazon’s 16 percent investment in Deliveroo on the basis that the deal would not likely “damage competition in either restaurant delivery or online convenience grocery delivery,” according to a statement from the CMA.

Amazon was set to be the largest contributor to a $575 million investment announced in May 2019. By July of the same year, British regulators were scrutinizing the deal, claiming there were “reasonable grounds” to suspect that Amazon and Deliveroo would “cease to be distinct” were it to go through. Many months and a pandemic later, the CMA provisionally approved the deal in April 2020. Grounds for approval were that, thanks to the pandemic decimating the restaurant industry, Deliveroo would have had to exit the food delivery market without Amazon’s investment.

Though it seems the stakes are actually less dire for Deliveroo. The CMA said today that it has revised its provisional findings from April and found that “Deliveroo would no longer be likely to exit the market in the absence of this transaction.”

Even so, a lot has changed in the third-party since Amazon first announced its plans to invest in Deliveroo. The biggest development (besides COVID-19) has been Takeaway.com’s acquisition of Just Eat that was approved in April and created one of the largest food delivery companies in the world. That deal alone makes the U.K. food delivery market more competitive, and renders Amazon (a little) less of a behemoth come to gobble up marketshare. Uber Eats also operates in the U.K., as do a handful of smaller players. 

Another concern of the CMA’s was that through its investment, Amazon would cease to be competitive with Deliveroo. Thanks in large part to the Just Eat-Takeaway.com deal, that appears to no longer be the case.

“Looking closely at the size of the shareholding and how it will affect Amazon’s incentives, as well as the competition that the businesses will continue to face in food delivery and convenience groceries, we’ve found that the investment should not have a negative impact on customers,” Stuart McIntosh, Inquiry Chair for the CMA, said in a statement.

The CMA will now ask for views on the new findings by July 10. From there, it will make its final decision, which is due by August 6, 2020.

Singapore’s TiffinLabs Will Launch Its Tech-Driven Virtual Restaurant Network in the U.S. in 2020

Singapore-based food tech company TiffinLabs announced this week it has acquired access to kitchen space in 1,000 locations in the U.S., Europe, and Asia to create a global network of virtual restaurant brands.

The company, which was founded in 2019, is known for the nine different virtual restaurant brands it operates out of its kitchens in Singapore. According to a press release, TiffinLabs will bring five of these brands to the U.S., starting in San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston, and Austin in the fourth quarter of 2020. It also has plans to bring its restaurants to London, Manchester, and Birmingham in the U.K.

TiffinLabs uses what it calls an “AI-driven kitchen operating and management system” to “identify food trends and consumer preferences.” In other words, the company identifies food trends and demands in specific areas and plans its locations and cuisine types around those factors. The company also uses this data-driven model to improve improve its ingredient supply chain and research and develop the best packaging for delivery meals. 

It is one of several restaurant chains that is currently focused on creating global virtual brands and ghost kitchens. Fat Brands recently partnered with Epic Kitchens to open 20 ghost kitchens across the U.S. And Phillipenes-based Jollibee just opened its first ghost kitchen in Chicago. Other big-name brands — Chick-fil-A and the Halal Guys among them — have partnered with the likes of Kitchen United and DoorDash to get their food into areas where they do not necessarily have standalone locations.

TiffinLabs’ founder and chairman Kishin RK said in a statement that over the next three years, we’ll see two types of winners in the ghost kitchen/virtual restaurant space: local niche players creating specialty cuisine and global delivery players that serve all parts of the globe. TiffinLabs looks to be aiming for the latter category with its forthcoming expansion.

Moe’s Southwest Grill Opens Kiosk-Only Restaurant

Atlanta, GA-headquarterd Moe’s Southwest Grill is best known for its fast-casual take on Mexican food. It could also soon be known for the tech it uses to get said Mexican food to customers in a more contactless format. Today, the chain announced that its new kiosk-only location is open for business in Pittsburgh, PA.

This is the first of what will be multiple kiosk-only locations for Moe’s. The chain had originally planned to launch its Pittsburg location as well as one in Charlottesville, VA in the first quarter of 2020. It’s unclear if the pandemic was the reason for the delay.

The kiosk-only Moe’s is exactly as it sounds. The restaurant, owned and operated by Moe’s multi-unit franchisee, Mike Geiger, features multiple kiosks from which customers can directly order and pay for food, skipping the need for human-to-human interaction. 

One POS terminal and cashier will be available for customers that prefer ordering and paying for their meals via another human being.

The role kiosks play in the future of ordering and paying for restaurant food is still being determined. These standalone machines that require you to touch a screen could be seen by more wary customers as germ repositories. However, keying items in on a screen still requires less human-to-human interaction than talking to a cashier, and there’s also indications that facial recognition and gesture tech could soon become part of kiosk design. Others, like this restaurant in Sweden, are placing kiosks behind glass walls and in doing so making them accessible to outside foot traffic. 

For now, the Moe’s in Pittsburgh will feature regular old kiosks that accept Apple Pay, university cards (for college students in the surrounding area), and cash. Cash, in particular, is important, since one of the issues with digital payments at restaurants is that they exclude millions of unbanked and underbanked individuals in the U.S. While cashless payments are the norm in some countries (see: Sweden), it’s unlikely restaurants across the U.S. will go full-on cashless anytime soon. Self-order kiosks and other contactless restaurant tech coming out of the pandemic will need to account for that fact. 

Digital Meal Voucher Company Swile Raised $78.7M to Expand Internationally

French startup Swile, previously known as Lunchr, announced today it has raised a $78.7 million (€70 million) Series C round, according to TechCrunch. The round was led by Index Ventures, with participation from Bpifrance and Idinvest. This brings Swile’s total funding to €115 million.

Since 2018, Paris-based Swile has been on a mission to disrupt the meal voucher market. In France, employers typically pay part of the value of these tickets, which can be used at most restaurants. And nowadays, more companies are adopting digital replacements to the old paper meal voucher. 

Swile provides one such version of this digital meal voucher via a prepaid card and app. Companies top up employees’ cards each month, and cards can be associated with a person’s bank account. Roughly 200,000 employees across 7,500 companies use Swile right now.

Part of Swile’s new funds will go towards expanding its service internationally. The company says it is looking at Brazil as well as other European countries. Additionally, new funds will go towards offering other non-food benefits to employees, such as reimbursements, gift cards, and events.

Changing up the corporate meal game is something we’re seeing a lot of these days — and with good reason. Thanks to the pandemic, a huge number of employees still working from home, and traditional forms of office lunches, whether vouchers, or catering, have been thrown into uncertainty. Companies have responded with everything from direct-to-consumer meal delivery services for employees to customizable meal plans for virtual sales meetings and events.

As the workforce gets more disparate in terms of location and the state of corporate lunches remains in flux, Swile may be wise to try and diversify its offerings right now.

Run a Restaurant From Your Phone, Thanks to This Latin American Tech Startup

Click through any restaurant industry publication in these pandemic-stricken days and you’ll likely assume that to run an off-premises restaurant, you need to load up on as much tech as you can. But as we’re fond of saying here at The Spoon, when it comes to restaurant tech, quality matters way more than bells and whistles. For all the contactless dining kits, delivery integrators, and AI-enabled tools out there, it’s the simpler solutions often create more value for the restaurant.

A Mexico City-based startup called remotekitchen appears to be betting on that idea with its new restaurant tech platform that essentially lets restaurant operators run a business directly from their mobile phones. That includes everything from promoting their restaurant to taking orders and processing payments. And for independent restaurants in Latin America — many of whom are not even online — that’s all they need.

“We are mobile and this [solution] is working for a smartphone-first operation,” David Peña, remotekitchen’s founder and CEO told me over the phone last week. With fellow cofounder and company COO Diego Vielma, he walked me through the technology and how it can get restaurants up and running with their off-premises strategies.

The company started as a delivery-only kitchen in 2019 and quickly pivoted to software in response to the ongoing COVID-19 crisis. As has been well-documented, worldwide shutdowns have decimated restaurants as we know them, and there’s been much ado over the prohibitive cost of doing delivery via third parties like Grubhub and Uber Eats. So it’s perhaps not surprising that when remotekitchen started tinkering with its own software, others took note.

As restaurant tech goes, the remotekitchen platform is an extremely simple setup. A Basic plan gets you a website (those already online can simply add an “order” button), an app for receiving orders, coupon/promotion management. Those who opt for the Plus plan also get their own branded iOS and Android apps and the ability to process payments online. Either takes about a day to set up, and restaurants can also sell meals via a Facebook integration.

There’s a good reason for the simplicity here. Peña says that unlike the U.S., Latin America’s restaurant tech is “far from being developed.” Tech solutions are hard to come by, and even when they’re available, they’re overly complex.

“This is an industry that is working with almost no resources, almost no labor, so the whole industry is running on the smartphone of the owner,” he explained, adding that he’s seen many restaurants simply taking orders through WhatsApp. 

On top of that, roughly 96 percent of independent restaurants in Latin America are not online at all. There are no menus to peruse via the web, and third-party services like Uber Eats are out of the question, given the high commission fees associated with those companies.

The crew at remotekitchen bundled all of these factors together and have built a solution to address them that works on any device and is most appropriately suited to mobile devices. “We believe we can unlock a new market by giving access to a technology,” said Peña.

It’s very early days for the company, which is still in testing phase. They are currently working with just 10 restaurants, though Vielma said that over 50 are on a waiting list and will be able to use the software once remotekitchen “really understands how we are adding value to this small group of restaurants.”

One thing that may help that progress along is the company’s recent participation in food business accelerator Food-X. When remotekitchen joined the cohort back in March, they had no product on the market. Without any technology to back it up, they quickly launched a landing page and started signing up restaurants and figuring out how their product could add actual value to the Latin American restaurant industry.

“They actively seek out feedback and iterate as quickly as any team we’ve worked with so the product gets better and better, not because of guessing, but because they are engaged with their customers, their advisors, and their investors to understand what works and what doesn’t,” Peter Bodenheimer, Partner and Director at Food-X, added over email.

That this past Food-X cohort was entirely remote actually helped. Vielma noted that staying in Mexico City and doing a virtual cohort let the company stay focused on their core market and in communication with the restaurants surrounding them.

At the moment, remotekitchen is developing the final part of its product before they officially go to market. From there, the company plans to start raising its seed round.

The overarching goal is to empower any restaurant to get online — no small feat when the majority of your target region is currently offline and a pandemic is currently wrecking havoc on the entire industry. A huge part of the restaurant industry’s evolution will be the shift towards more and more off-premises orders, for which an online component is pretty much mandatory these days.

Peña says that remotekitchen’s long-term goal “is to enable universal access to healthy delicious and affordable food by democratizing the marketplace.” In other words, anyone can be a restaurant, thanks to mobile-first restaurant technology.