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☆ Travis Kalanick's $15 billion food tech company cuts employees globally in profitability push
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-03 | by ( Meghan Morris | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

download the appSign up to get the inside scoop on today’s biggest stories in markets, tech, and business — delivered daily. Read previewSix months after layoffs at food technology company City Storage Systems, another round of cuts hit teams globally, per leaked audio obtained by Business Insider. More than 80 US employees were cut at Otter, the company's restaurant tech arm, said a source familiar with the people laid off. This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. In fall 2021, CEO Travis Kalanick raised $850 million for CSS from investors including Microsoft, at a $15 billion valuation.

Persons: —, Guido Gabrielli, Otter, Travis Kalanick, Kalanick, Uber, Gabrielli Organizations: Service, Storage Systems, Business, CSS, Microsoft, BI Locations: Canada, Latin America

☆ The rapid rise and fall of ghost kitchens
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-14 | by ( Kenneth Niemeyer | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Ghost kitchens are restaurants with no storefront and no seating that customers never see and which only do delivery. Several influencers and celebrities have used ghost kitchens to produce their own lines of food, like YouTuber Jimmy Donaldson, known online as Mr. AdvertisementAnd as quality issues and late delivery times worsen, some ghost kitchens are starting to see legal challenges. Cracker Barrel also opened its own virtual restaurant using CloudKitchens, another ghost kitchen group, according to Restaurant Business. The company owns three virtual brands, Banda Burrito, The Meltdown, and Burger Den.

Persons: —, Jimmy Donaldson, Burger, Noah Schnapp, It's, TenderFix, Brinker, Kevin Hochman, Donaldson, MrBeast, Travis Kalanick, Kelli Valade Organizations: Service, Business, The New York Times, Kroger, Times, Restaurant Business, Banda, Denny's

☆ Travis Kalanick's CloudKitchens loses its chief financial officer
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-02 | by ( Meghan Morris | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

The chief financial officer of City Storage Systems, the umbrella company of Travis Kalanick's foodtech juggernaut, left last month, two employees told Business Insider. Before City Storage Systems, Curran spent more than a dozen years at Amazon, where he was most recently the vice president of finance and chief financial officer for the international consumer business, per his LinkedIn. His social-media profile lists a January end date for his latest role, the chief financial officer of "stealth startup." City Storage Systems is a multifaceted effort to reinvent food production, just as Kalanick aimed to upend the taxi industry by founding Uber. Tech and real-estate businesses such as City Storage Systems face challenges, including inflation and higher interest rates.

Persons: Travis Kalanick's, John Curran, Curran, Uber, Kalanick Organizations: Storage Systems, Business, City Storage Systems, Uber, LinkedIn, Otter, Tech, Systems

☆ Ghost kitchens were supposed to revolutionize restaurants. They’re crashing
▼ + stars: | 2023-12-05 | by ( Nathaniel Meyersohn | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +5 min

But ghost kitchens are now crashing. Ghost kitchens are stripped-down commercial kitchens with no dine-in option. Sometimes called cloud kitchens, dark kitchens or virtual kitchens, ghost kitchens fulfill online orders from delivery apps like Grubhub and Uber Eats. Ghost kitchens also offered big chains a way to test new menu concepts, items and brands at lower rents and with less labor. So restaurants have shut down their ghost kitchens and funding for the concept has dried up.

Persons: Uber, Pat Greenhouse, ”, John Gordon, ” Wendy’s, Travis Kalanick, Applebee’s, “, Stephen Zagor, ” John Gordon, Tiffany Hagler, Wendy’s, Kalanick’s CloudKitchens, ” Gordon Organizations: New, New York CNN, Big, Kroger, Reef Technology, Boston Globe, Technology, Wings, Columbia Business School, National Restaurant Association, Geard, Bloomberg, Getty, Butler Locations: New York, South Boston, Dobbs Ferry , New York, U.S

☆ A virtual restaurant brand run by robots is operating inside Travis Kalanick's CloudKitchens. Here's how it works.
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-09 | by ( Nancy Luna | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Better Days, a virtual brand assisted by robots, officially debuts today. Better Days by Remy Robotics wants to scale its wellness brand to 500 locations in five years. Wellness food brand Better Days is officially debuting today inside Travis Kalanick's CloudKitchens commissary kitchens. Remy Robotics founder and CEO Yegor Traiman left his job as an electric-vehicle engineer five years ago to launch Remy Robotics. Better Days, a robot-run virtual restaurant in New York City, sells chef-driven dishes like this salmon meal.

Persons: Remy, —, there's, Travis Kalanick's, Uber, Yegor Traiman, McDonald's, Jose Andres, El, Ferran Adrià, Traiman Organizations: Remy Robotics, Service, Disney Locations: New York City, White, Chipotle, Europe, Brooklyn

☆ After job cuts at Travis Kalanick's food tech startup, an exec discusses challenges and rallies staff with bullish comments on Future Foods
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-09 | by ( Meghan Morris | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

A particular focus was an Otter business called Future Foods. But now, Future Foods is generating healthy revenue, relative to the cost of customer acquisition. He did not disclose revenue for Future Foods or other businesses on the call. 'Healthy tension'Gabrielli did admit there's a "healthy tension" with the Future Foods team, saying that they "tend to sandbag a little bit their capabilities." Future Foods also asks would-be customers if they maintain at least a four-star rating on one delivery app.

Persons: Travis Kalanick, Uber, Otter, Guido Gabrielli, Gabrielli, it's Organizations: Storage Systems, CSS, Otter, Tech, Foods, Future Foods

☆ Inside the implosion of dark kitchen startup Kbox Global, another pandemic-era boom beginning to bust
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-23 | by ( Callum Burroughs | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

In 2019, after years of investing in and setting up food and beverage brands internationally, she founded dark-kitchen startup Kbox from London. But two years after this funding, large for an early-stage European startup, Vellani exited the business suddenly, citing health issues. "You're only judged on food quality, but if the chef is doing 10 times the work for same money, then it's a fundamental problem." Both Uber Eats and Deliveroo, after an initial burst of interest, would eventually go on to cut back on virtual brands. In an email comment, Vellani acknowledged her lack of direct technical experience but said she sought to fix this through other C-suite hires.

Persons: Salima Vellani, Uber, Travis Kalanick, Vellani, Butler, CloudKitchens, Kbox, MrBeast Burger, YouTuber MrBeast, Jimmy Donaldson, Influencer Jimmy Donaldson, Burger, Brexit, Vellani didn't, Karim Vellani, Karim, Ben Schultz, Nick Holloway, I've Organizations: Balderton, Hoxton Ventures, Reef Technologies, Lean, Network, United, Advisory Locations: London, Saudi, Revolut, COVID, Kbox, Sydney

☆ CloudKitchens, ghost restaurant news and updates
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-25 | by ( Meghan Morris | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

In 2021, Kalanick raised $850 million at a $15 billion valuation from backers including Microsoft. One, a physical ghost kitchen arm called CloudKitchens in the US, transforms mainly warehouses into private kitchen spaces that big companies and mom-and-pops alike can rent. 2021 fundraiseTravis Kalanick Theo Wargo/WireImageIn late 2021, CloudKitchens' parent company raised $850 million at a $15 billion valuation, Insider exclusively reported. Some entry-level sales employees have struggled at Otter, Insider reported. CloudKitchens US locationsA 2021 Insider analysis showed how CloudKitchens (and competitor Reef) snapped up properties across the US.

Persons: Travis, Kalanick, Travis Kalanick, Uber, –, fundraise Travis Kalanick Theo Wargo, CloudKitchens, John Curran, they're, Sawyer, Meghan Morris Organizations: Microsoft, Morning, Storage Systems, CSS, Investors, Uber, Financial, City Storage Systems, Wall Street, Amazon, CIA, Otter Locations: Los Angeles, Saudi, Miami

☆ Inside Otter University: How Travis Kalanick's sales boot camp for young techies went off the rails
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-17 | by ( Meghan Morris | Darius Rafieyan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +21 min

"It seemed like a cool, innovative new company," Lam said. Starting in early 2022, the company poured millions of dollars into an experimental sales boot camp called Otter University. She joined the company in 2020 as Otter's head of sales enablement and helped dream up the idea of a sales boot camp a year later. Two former OtterU employees said that Law and another Otter executive urged managers to join their teams for late-night drinks following team dinners. But the late nights and free-flowing alcohol struck some OtterU employees as inappropriate for the workplace, especially when managers had to deal with hungover teams the next day.

Persons: Brian Lam, messaged, Travis, Lam, Uber, It's, Kalanick, voraciously, they're, Otter, wasn't, salespeople, Cory Epstein, Phoebe Law, Law, people's, –, Kalanick's Uber, Otter's, Kate, Samul Beal, I'd, Beal, didn't, terminations, he'd, OtterU, I'm, grads, Salespeople, Guido Gabrielli, Keith Dunphy, Dunphy, Bram van Staalduinen, Phoebe Law's, Debra Glaser, Jen Zablotny, there's, Ordermark, Burger, Meghan, Darius Organizations: Texas, Otter, Storage Systems, Microsoft, Otter University, Law, Adobe, SAP, Houston, OtterU, hungover, NCR, Google, Brands, Houston Rockets Locations: Korean, Houston, Toronto, LA, Las Vegas, Miami, Seoul, South Korea, Houston ., OtterU, Otter, Canada

☆ MrBeast sabotaged his own burger brand, his restaurant partner claims in a new lawsuit. The YouTube star recently sued the ghost kitchen operator, accusing it of making 'terrible quality' food.
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-07 | by ( Nancy Luna | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Last week, YouTube star MrBeast sued the restaurant firm behind his namesake burger brand. YouTube star Jimmy Donaldson used his fame to "torpedo" the burger brand, the VDC suit says. The lawsuit comes a week after Beast Investments sued Virtual Dining Concepts alleging that VDC had ignored the MrBeast Burger Brand. MrBeast Burger debuted in 2020 and is sold in hundreds of restaurants seeking to use excess kitchen space to earn additional revenue. The reality is that the overwhelming majority of customers were highly satisfied, and the product was excellent," the VDC suit said.

Persons: MrBeast, Jimmy Donaldson, Donaldson, Burger, MrBeast Burger, Donaldson's, Travis Kalanick's CloudKitchens, Dorothy Calba Organizations: Concepts, YouTube, Service, Beast Investments, Dining, Twitter, Burger, Kitchen United, Euromonitor Locations: Wall, Silicon, New York, MrBeast, Florida, Washington

☆ MrBeast says 'ghost kitchen' partner is hurting his brand with 'terrible quality' burgers
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-01 | by ( Sindhu Sundar | Nancy Luna | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

The burgers' 'terrible quality' was the fault of a business partner, he alleged in a new lawsuit. His company alleged complaints raised to partner Virtual Dining Concepts “fell on deaf ears.”Get the inside scoop on today’s biggest stories in business, from Wall Street to Silicon Valley — delivered daily. Reef, which sells MrBeast Burger, has logged multiple consumer complaints about uncooked burgers, Insider previously reported. Representatives for Virtual Dining Concepts did not respond to Insider's request for comment. Insider's Brittany Chang wrote last year about eating a "mediocre burger" at a physical MrBeast burger joint in New Jersey's American Dream mall.

Persons: MrBeast, Jimmy Donaldson, Donaldson's, Travis Kalanick's, Burger, Brittany Chang Organizations: Service, YouTube, Beast Investments Locations: Wall, Silicon, New

☆ 10 Things in Tech: Apple Vision Pro, Big Tech's big AI salaries, and Marc Andreessen's plan to save the world
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-07 | by ( Nathan Rennolds | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Apple Vision Pro. Apple's Vision Pro looks amazing, but why buy it? The Vision Pro also comes with a host of caveats beyond the price tag, such as a battery life of just two hours. Read more about the Apple Vision Pro's limits here. He said AI companies should be able to build fast and aggressively — and without regulation.

Persons: Nathan Rennolds, let's, Tony Fadell, Apple, Salesforce's Marc Benioff, Justin Sullivan, Marc Benioff, Marc Andreessen, Travis Kalanick's, Adam Beswick, he's, grads, Z, Leigh Thompson, Jack Sommers Organizations: Apple Vision, Apple, Companies, Meta, Sony, Getty, Salesforce, Amazon, Oracle, Big Tech, CloudKitchens, Stanford, UCLA, USC, Sequoia Capital, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University Locations: London

Mobile ordering and delivery have boosted Starbucks' bottom line and have become an incremental and growing part of the business. Starbucks would not share specifics on the size of its delivery business but has previously said the segment has seen a 20% year-over-year growth. CloudKitchens, which rents small, private kitchen bays that share a reception, offers one solution to delivery growth. Starbucks plans to open the San Francisco ghost kitchen on August 22 and operate it from 7am to 6pm, per a March filing with the city. The ghost kitchen will not sell alcohol.

Persons: Uber, —, Travis Kalanick, Laxman Narasimhan, Travis Kalanick Steve Jennings, CloudKitchens, Pat Grismer, Brady Brewer, Gloria Dawson, Darius Rafieyan, Meghan Morris Organizations: Starbucks, Service, CloudKitchens, Mobile, Buffalo Wild Wings, Getty, TechCrunch, Food Locations: Francisco, San Francisco, China, New York

☆ No, 'Stranger Things' star Noah Schnapp didn't open his own restaurant. It's the latest 'virtual brand' offering from IHOP.
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-16 | by ( Nancy Luna | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Thousands of virtual brands continue to flood delivery apps like Uber Eats, DoorDash, and Grubhub. IHOP is launching a third delivery-only brand – a chicken menu by a "Stranger Things" star. Partnering with Noah Schnapp and Nextbite were a seamless fit to meet the consumer target for our newest Virtual Brand." Stranger Things star Noah Schnapp helped create a virtual chicken menu for IHOP. Nextbite's other celebrity-backed virtual brands include Packed Bowls by Wiz Khalifa and 'Wichcraft sandwiches by Tom Colicchio.

☆ How to Spot a Ghost Restaurant on DoorDash, Grubhub, and Uber Eats
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-22 | by ( Nancy Luna | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

Thousands of virtual brands are flooding delivery apps like Uber Eats, DoorDash, and Grubhub. According to a joint report by Grubhub and the market-research firm Technomic, 41% of independent restaurants are operating virtual restaurants. Uber Eats and GrubhubUber Eats and Grubhub do not label virtual brands. Our perspective is that a virtual restaurant is a real restaurant," Uber Eats told Insider. The Miami address for the virtual brand Sam's Crispy Chicken is listed as "MIA07-2" on the Uber Eats app.

☆ Burger King's owner just opened a delivery-focused food hall where customers can order from Popeyes, Firehouse Subs, and other chains. The company is one of many expanding the ghost kitchen model to r
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-08 | by ( Nancy Luna | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +13 min

Burger King's owner recently opened its first ghost kitchen, or digital food hall, in Miami. And recently, the parent of Burger King, Restaurant Brands International, opened its first ghost kitchen in Miami. Wonder is part ghost kitchen, part food delivery van, part meal-kit provider. These ghost kitchens on wheels, outfitted with cooking equipment and chefs, can be hailed through an app. The company, which ended its partnership with Miami-based Reef Technology this year, is not labeling the facility as a ghost kitchen.

☆ Travis Kalanick's CloudKitchens startup is cutting jobs as a pandemic-era surge in food ordering subsides
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-03 | by ( Nancy Luna | Meghan Morris | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

CloudKitchens, the richly valued startup founded by former Uber chief Travis Kalanick, is cutting jobs as a pandemic-era boom in online food ordering subsides and a recession looms. The ghost kitchen operator has shed corporate recruiting employees, a move made to get closer to profitability, according to a person close to the matter. On November 1, employees on the recruiting team were asked to attend an impromptu Zoom meeting, described as a "global update." Tunna said Kalanick's goal is for CloudKitchens to be profitable next year, and with that, the startup has to make some changes, according to the witness. CloudKitchens raised about $850 million last fall from backers, including Microsoft, in a round that valued the startup at $15 billion.

☆ Burger King's owner opened its first ghost kitchen in Miami. Meet 7 innovative ghost-kitchen startups expanding the multibillion-dollar segment beyond the models developed by CloudKitchens and Reef Te
▼ + stars: | 2022-06-27 | by ( Nancy Luna | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +13 min

Burger King's owner recently opened its first ghost kitchen, or digital food hall, in Miami. Meet 7 nontraditional ghost kitchen startups. And, recently, the parent of Burger King, Restaurant Brands International, opened its first ghost kitchen in Miami. These ghost kitchens on wheels, outfitted with cooking equipment and chefs, can be hailed through an app. The company, which ended its partnership with Miami-based Reef Technology this year, is not labeling the facility as a ghost kitchen.

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