Kitchen United (KU) will expand its ghost kitchen network to include Kroger locations thanks to a just-announced partnership between KU and the grocery retailer. KU kitchens will be located at various Kroger locations, the first of these being at a Ralphs in Los Angeles slated to open this fall.
Participating Kroger stores will house a KU location that includes “up to six local, regional or national” restaurant brands, according to today’s press release. Customers can order meals from these restaurants via the KU mobile app or onsite at a self-service kiosk. They will have the option to bundle items from different restaurant concepts together into a single order, a concept that KU’s Chief Business Officer Atul Sood recently said was technically complex but extremely important to the future of online ordering.
While customers can choose to have their meal delivered (via KU’s third-party delivery service partners), the bigger appeal here might be the pickup option. Since the kitchens will be located onsite at stores, Kroger customers can order food while they shop for groceries and simply pick their meal up at the end of their trip.
The partnership is another example of the lines between the restaurant ghost kitchen and the grocery store fading. A year ago, Euromonitor predicted such a shift would happen. In keeping with that, the last several months have seen companies like GoPuff, Ghost Kitchens, and Food Rocket launch initiatives that sit squarely between the grocery and the ghost kitchen.
Moving towards this gray area is intentional on the part of KU. “We are proud to have launched a number of successful ghost kitchen centers across the country, and now we are applying our experience and taking steps to expand in non-traditional ghost kitchen formats such as retail shopping centers and food halls like our newest kitchen center location in Chicago alongside our efforts with Kroger,” Sood noted in a statement.
He added that KU’s tech stack is an important part of this setup and can optimize “any kitchen setting for streamlined and profitable off-premise business.”
More KU-Kroger locations are planned for the coming months. In the meantime, those interested in learning more about ghost kitchens and the ghost kitchen tech stack can tune into The Spoon’s Restaurant Tech Summit on August 17. The virtual event will feature KU’s CTO Jessi Moss along with many other restaurants, tech companies, and thought leaders in the restaurant space. Grab a ticket here.
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