Maybe ghost kitchens aren’t scaring up as much business these days, as Uber founder Travis Kalanick just shut down a ghost kitchen that his new megabucks startup Cloudkitchens opened there five years ago.
We first became aware of this concept called “ghost kitchens” just before the pandemic hit, as websites were promoting “restaurants” on DoorDash and Grubhub that were actually just ramshackle trailers with half-ass kitchens in them and maybe a porta-potty outside. But as the tech industry does, they not only presented these fly-by-night operations as real restaurants, the ghost kitchens also infamously impersonated a couple of local favorites like Kin Khao and Blowfish Sushi in hopes of a few quick, greasy dollars before anyone noticed.
After Uber founder Travis Kalanick left that company in disgrace, he decided that ghost kitchens were his way back into the tech game. So he founded a ghost kitchen startup called Cloudkitchens and started opening ghost kitchens across the Bay Area and beyond, many of whose interiors look more like a prison than a food service facility. The company has since amassed $1.3 billion in VC money, significant chunks of which came from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and Microsoft…