Kudrna says the virtual restaurants are a way to gain enough incremental revenue to offset the fees he pays to the third-party apps, which now drive one-third of his sales. Kitchen United, backed by $50 million in funding from Google Ventures and other investors, has two locations in Pasadena, California, and Chicago. Both Kitchen United and DoorDash are staking their shared-kitchen models on helping successful restaurants grow, rather than serving as incubators for startups. Grubhub and UberEats say their virtual restaurant programs help small businesses compete in this landscape. Sign Up NowUberEats has helped launch 4,000 such virtual restaurants worldwide, about half of them in the U.S. and Canada, according to Kristen Adamowski, head of Uber’s virtual restaurants program.

Source: thestar October 22, 2019 00:39 UTC