Cloud kitchens have been gaining popularity in the US, with a few startups obtaining substantial funding to expand their businesses. By 2021, well over USD 4 billion had been invested in cloud kitchen startups.

CloudKitchens is the emerging leader in this space, having attracted the highest funding in the industry—well over USD 1 billion was raised during 2019–21. The company’s investors include Uber Co-founder Travis Kalanick and the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund. With a strong presence across the US, the company has leveraged funding to venture into Mexico, the UK, and India through a series of acquisitions.

Increasingly, players in the space are veering toward creating virtual restaurant concepts or digital food brands, even embarking on crossborder partnerships to take their brands to new territories. These companies mark a departure from the capital-intensive kitchen infrastructure model prevalent in the industry. Rather than operating and managing their commercial kitchens, some players focus on developing food brands that can be franchised by third-party kitchens. Creating Culinary Communities (C3) is a noteworthy player in this arena, partnering with MENA-based cloud kitchen operator Kitopi to launch major C3 brands across 150 locations in the Middle East and Asia. Both players also attracted capital infusions in 2021, with C3 raising USD 90 billion in two rounds and Kitopi drawing USD 415 million in a funding round led by Softbank’s Vision Fund 2.

The industry has also experienced incursions from pure-play online delivery management platforms looking to leverage their tech stack to launch their own cloud kitchen businesses. Nextbite (formerly Ordermark) is a classic example.