How Kitopi Benefits Restaurants and Brands

Tech-enabled and customer-obsessed, kitopi helps restaurants expand rapidly by providing them with managed cloud kitchen infrastructure. This allows them to focus on their brands, bringing in new customers and increasing revenues while kitopi takes care of the rest.

Kitopi operates 60+ kitchens in the UAE, KSA, Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar with an engineering hub in Krakow, Poland, a robotics hub in Odense, Denmark, and a global customer experience center in Dubai. It partners with 200+ F&B brands.

Faster Expansion

The world’s leading managed cloud kitchen platform Kitopi partners with restaurants to expand their delivery reach by enabling them to open their own kitchens without the hassle and cost. The company takes care of everything from infrastructure to staff, training, food preparation, delivery operations and customer experience.

The firm has grown quickly since launching in January 2018 with a $60 million Series B round led by Knollwood and Lumia Capital. It has also raised $415 million in a Series C round that made the firm a unicorn — or tech startup with a valuation of $1 billion or more.

Kitopi’s rapid growth has required the business to grow its software development team. To meet its needs, the company chose Facilio’s Connected CaFM to help scale its IT department and ensure uninterrupted, best-in-class services across its portfolio of outlets. The solution provides a single pane of glass for asset owners and operators to monitor the performance of all their facilities.

Lower Costs

When Kitopi first launched in Dubai in January 2018, very few people knew what a cloud kitchen was. Now, it has become a true Unicorn and a leader in one of the fastest-growing sectors in the food industry.

With the new funding, Kitopi plans to expand its presence across the Middle East and enter other fast-growing markets in Asia. The company also plans to strengthen its technology stack and build best-in-class teams.

The company’s key competitive advantage lies in its proprietary Smart Kitchen Operating System, a suite of applications that maximizes efficiency. It has allowed Kitopi to double its orders in three years, and cut kitchen preparation time by 40%.

As a managed cloud kitchen platform, Kitopi works with multiple brands to provide them with a complete end-to-end service. This allows them to set up delivery-only locations with minimal capital expenditure and time investment. Additionally, Kitopi offers its employees access to FlexxPay, a mobile app that lets workers access part of their earned salaries whenever needed. This enables them to lower financial stress and stay focused on their work.

Better Customer Experience

Brands can open delivery-only locations with a minimum of capital investment with Kitopi’s cloud kitchen infrastructure and proprietary software. This allows them to focus on their products and services instead of on operating, managing and scaling the business.

The company has also developed a Smart Kitchen Operating System (SKOS) that optimizes the performance of its cloud kitchen operations in real time to ensure a distinguished customer experience. This solution has helped Kitopi expand its presence to 200+ brands in 60+ sites within three years of launch.

Founded in January 2018 by Mohamad Ballout, Saman Darkan, Bader Ataya and Andres Arenas, Kitopi is one of the fastest-growing Unicorns to emerge from the Middle East. The managed cloud kitchen platform boasts a revenue-share model that has pushed it to over $1 billion in valuation. It operates a portfolio of invested and partner F&B brands alongside its own in-house offerings, including a grocery retail offering. Its cloud kitchens are spread across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar as well as an engineering hub in Krakow, Poland and a global customer experience centre in Dubai.

Scalability

When a confectionary brand wants to expand its product line, it doesn’t build its own factory; instead, it partners with a manufacturer. That’s the same idea Kitopi founder Mohamad Ballout had when he launched the company in January 2021 with co-founders Saman Darkan (chief technology officer), Andy Arenas (chief property officer) and Bader Ataya (chief growth officer).

Today, the world-leading managed cloud kitchen platform has more than 1000 employees and 60 ghost kitchens – outlets that cook food for online delivery orders – across the UAE, KSA and Kuwait. Its proprietary Smart Kitchen Operating System (SKOS) allows restaurants to open up a delivery-only presence with little capital and time by taking care of all the infrastructure, staffing and cooking processes as well as customer experience management.

By doing so, it aims to help F&B brands grow in their own markets or internationally within 14 days. Upon joining the platform, restaurants pay an onboarding fee and Kitopi takes 85 per cent of the revenue, giving back 10-13 per cent in royalties to the restaurant.