Micro food hall Local Kitchens is expanding across Northern California with at least four more Bay Area locations on the way this year — including three this summer.
The San Francisco startup will launch a new outlet in Los Gatos in June and two are planned for Campbell and Mill Valley in July. A fourth food hall is on the way to Santa Clara by year end, What Now San Francisco reports, while another new stop will open in Davis in May for a total of at least 11 locations statewide.
The food hall operator, typically hosting as many as 10 brands in a restaurant-sized space with on-site dining, has raised $28 million to date from backers including DoorDash CEO Tony Xu, Stephen Curry’s Penny Jar Capital and Twitter founder Jack Dorsey. The Business Times named it a startup to watch earlier this year.
Where are Local Kitchens exactly?
- Davis: 500 First St. in Davis Commons Shopping Mall
- Los Gatos: 681 Blossom Hill Road
- Campbell: 1640 S. Bascom Ave., in the Hamilton Shopping Center
- Mill Valley: 741 East Blithedale Ave.
- Santa Clara: 4300 Great America Parkway
Five of the six Local Kitchens halls currently open are in the Bay Area — Cupertino, Palo Alto, San Jose, Lafayette and Mountain View — with a sixth that opened in Roseville near Sacramento earlier this year.
The company has said it’s looking to add more in Northern and Southern California by year end — and after that, across the country. A spokesperson told me that to that end another 4-5 locations are "in the hopper" around NorCal and SoCal, but aren't fully signed or ready for official announcement.
Local Kitchens declined to share what restaurants will be on the menu at its upcoming halls. Some of the brands it has featured at Bay Area outlets are Curry Up Now, Señor Sisig, The Melt, Proposition Chicken, Wise Sons and Humphry Slocombe.
These new locations may be a little smaller than most; the company said they may host as few as five brands, compared with the typical of at least eight. Last year CEO Jon Goldsmith told me outlets are often around 2,000 square feet in size. The Santa Clara location is reportedly 2,300 square feet, and the recent deal for that space had Local Kitchens represented by Ron Cruz and Matt Sweeney of Newmark Knight Frank.
Goldsmith founded Local Kitchens in 2020 with fellow DoorDash colleagues Andrew Munday, the chief operating officer, and Jordon Bramble, chief technology officer. It originally launched as a ghost kitchen with takeout access, later adding the on-site dining dimension — likely a big factor in securing space in high-traffic retail corridors like its Palo Alto stop on California Avenue.
As opposed to ghost kitchens, which don’t offer outward-facing customer service and can feature “virtual” brands that don’t exist outside of delivery, Local Kitchens emphasizes its stores as hubs for existing local brands and its on-site seating as a particular fit for small groups and families who might all want something different.
Acknowledging the sneaky tactics and dystopian vibes the ghost kitchen model can conjure for some consumers and restaurateurs, Local Kitchens says it wants to be one of the good guys by being transparent with restaurant partners.
Similar to ghost kitchen competitor REEF Technology, based in Miami, Local Kitchens uses its own employees to prepare foods from multiple brands after striking licensing-type arrangements with restaurateurs.
Most of Local Kitchens funding to date came via a $25 million Series A round in June 2021 led by General Catalyst with contributions from Human Capital and Pear VC.
