Ghost Kitchen startup Kitopi has raised $60 million in new funding, according to an article this week from The Financial Times. The round was led by Lumia Capital and Knollwood. Kitopi declined to provide numbers around its current valuation.
The Dubai-based company operates more than 30 ghost kitchens in cities around the world, including its hometown, Abu Dhabi, New York, and London, among others.
Like other ghost kitchen facilities, Kitopi offers infrastructure for restaurants wanting to fulfill more off-premises orders and also expand into new geographic areas where they might not have a brick-and-mortar location. Kitopi specifically caters to those companies preparing meals for third-party delivery apps like DoorDash and Deliveroo. The company rents both space and staff to restaurants, who provide Kitopi with recipes and menus with which to fulfill the orders. Kitopi works directly with the food delivery services to fulfill the last mile and actually transport the food to customers.
The company has also developed an in-house tech stack it calls “a smart kitchen operating system” that “optimizes all aspects of kitchen operations in real time.”
According to FT, Kitopi will use the new funding to open a second headquarters in NYC, where thanks to soaring rents and shrinking margins, restaurants are scrambling to stay afloat and meet the demand for off-premises. Kitopi already operates some ghost kitchens in that city; adding more will give it more muscle when it comes to competing with the likes of Zuul, which recently opened the first of many planned NYC kitchens, and Kitchen United, which is expanding east and has a location planned for Brooklyn.
Kitopi plans to open 50 new kitchens in the Big Apple this year in addition to 100 additional locations worldwide.
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