A Chicago startup that lets kitchenless establishments like breweries and hotels offer food to their customers raised more funding to close out its seed round.
2ndKitchen announced Thursday that it raised another $3 million, bringing its total seed round to $4.35 million. The round was led by Hyde Park Venture Partners. Other backers include MATH Venture Partners, Great North Labs, Bragiel Brothers and M25. The startup previously raised $1.3 million in February.
Founded in 2018, 2ndKitchen connects businesses without kitchens to nearby restaurants, allowing them to create custom menus even though they don't serve food. Using an ordering kiosk located at the venue, patrons can have food delivered right to their table from one of the partnering neighborhood restaurants.
A graduate of the 2018 Techstars Chicago class, 2ndKitchen works with places like Midwest Coast Brewing in Chicago, Strong Rope Brewery in Brooklyn, and Birch Road Cellar in Seattle.
The hospitality industry is also using 2ndKitchen to offer room service to guests. Hotels can provide guests custom food menus and in-room delivery, all without having to operate their own kitchens.
2ndKitchen said it will use the new funding to continue expanding across the U.S. and begin selling to venues outside of bars, breweries and hotels.
The startup looks to fill a specific niche in the highly competitive food delivery space, which includes publicly traded companies like Grubhub and Uber, as well as DoorDash, which just this week raised another $100 million in VC funding at a $13 billion valuation.
Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick is also quietly building a food delivery startup called CloudKitchens, which buys up cheap real estate and turns those spaces into kitchens that are exclusively used for food delivery. CloudKitchens has already raised $400 million in outside funding.
With 2ndKitchen, restaurants get another revenue source by maximizing their kitchen capacity, especially during off-peak hours, the company said. And the venue keeps customers staying at their establishment longer, without having to invest in a full-time kitchen.
"Many service and hospitality businesses have to serve food in order to give customers a great experience, but having a kitchen is complicated, expensive, time-consuming, and too often unprofitable if food is not their main focus," Nick Anastasiades, CEO of 2ndKitchen, said in a statement. "2ndKitchen is the perfect solution. We help any business create a high-quality, custom, and on-brand dining experience for their customers, for free."
