California-based cloud kitchen provider Kitchen United has expanded the scope of its partnerships with Kroger, the US supermarket chain, and Apex, a provider of contactless smart order pickup solutions for use in food service, retail, and B2B ecommerce.

Kitchen United has just opened its second cloud kitchen MIX facility with Kroger at the latter’s store in The Heights neighborhood in Houston, Texas. The facility will offer customers on-demand, freshly prepared food from over 10 restaurant brands including Fuddruckers, Dog Haus, and Buca di Beppo, with pickup, to-go, and third-party delivery enabled. The collaboration is part of Kroger’s ‘Fresh for Everyone’ strategy and follows the January 2022 launch of its first cloud kitchen facility at Ralph’s Market in LA.

Kitchen United has also expanded the scope of its partnership with Apex to offer self-serve automated food lockers at two additional locations in Garden City, New York and Torrance, California for their new Grab Go Eat concept. The cloud kitchen operator has been using Apex smart food lockers since early 2021 and deploys them in high-traffic sites to provide customers with the convenience of picking up multi-brand orders from a single location.