Over the course of the last year and a half you’ve probably ordered a lot of take-out. But have you ever ordered in from a restaurant you’ve never heard of, only to look it up later and find out that it doesn’t exist? Then you may have ordered from a ghost kitchen.
Ghost kitchens are delivery-only restaurants that oftentimes operate out of the space of an existing one. In other words, a restaurant within a restaurant. The Inception-like concept might sound like a niche sort of deal but it’s actually become quite popular. Ghost kitchens could reach a $1 trillion global market by 2030, according to Euromonitor.
Los Angeles-based company Acelerate isn’t new to the concept. The company’s software enables existing restaurants to run up to five brands out of a single kitchen. On Wednesday, the company announced that it raised $14.4 million in a Series A to continue to help restaurants maximize use of their space.
“We were well on our way to a delivery-first restaurant world, but the pandemic further accelerated the shift,” George Jacobs, co-founder and CEO of Acelerate, said in a blog post. “The past year and a half has been the most taxing period we’ve seen in restaurant history, and it has served as a reminder of the industry’s fragility.”
Acelerate’s digital marketplace gets restaurateurs in contact with virtual brands and provides them with a central spot to manage all of their online storefronts. Restaurateurs on the platform are also provided with a suite of back-office tools to view sales, reconcile payments, assess their promotional spend and more.
“Restaurateurs are happy because they make more profit, employees are happy because they’re more productive and have greater earning potential and customers are happy because they have drastically increased selection to choose from,” Jacobs said in a statement.
Acelerate serves thousands of restaurants across the United States including national chains like Applebee’s across more than 1,500 locations.
“[We] believe delivery is the industry’s largest opportunity. It provides restaurants with the ability to reach new customers, drastically improve efficiencies and operate more profitably, but only if done right,” Jacobs continued.
Acelerate has helped process more than seven million orders over the past year, according to the company.
The latest raise, led by Sequoia Capital, will be used to invest in the company’s team as it continues to scale. Acelerate is currently on the lookout for three engineers and a head of product design to join its SoCal-based team.
