Kitchenita
This company is building a portfolio of virtual brands with renowned chefs and leading cpg companies.
| Date | Investors | Amount | Round |
|---|---|---|---|
| - | investor investor | €0.0 | round |
| N/A | €0.0 | round | |
* | $3.0m | Early VC | |
| Total Funding | 000k | ||
Founded in Argentina by French entrepreneur Alex Boccara, Belgian Gaspard Hambückers, and Argentine Leonardo Lucianna, Kitchenita was a food-tech company that operated a network of virtual restaurants. The founders, after arriving in Buenos Aires, identified a gap in the market due to the poor adaptation of traditional restaurants to the online delivery world. This observation led to the creation of Kitchenita, which officially began operations in March 2020, coinciding with the start of the pandemic.
The company's core business was creating and operating data-driven virtual food brands from dark kitchens, which were spaces optimized for delivery-only services. Kitchenita utilized proprietary software to analyze market data, identifying unmet consumer demand in specific neighborhoods across Latin America. This technology allowed the company to understand which types of food were in demand, at what price point, and in which locations, enabling the rapid launch of new, targeted food concepts. The business model focused on a digital franchise system, partnering with traditional restaurants that had idle kitchen capacity. This provided a digitization system and access to collective purchasing of supplies for offline restaurants, helping them transform digitally.
The company raised a total of $3.5 million over two funding rounds. A seed round of $500,000 was secured in late 2019/early 2020, followed by a $3 million Pre-Series A round in March 2022. Investors included FJ Labs, Newtopia, Magna Capital Partners, and Unpopular VC. Over its lifespan, Kitchenita expanded its operations to five markets in four countries, grew to over 130 employees, and developed more than 40 food brands. Despite its initial growth and expansion into countries like Chile and Colombia, the company announced the cessation of its operations in March 2025.
Keywords: food-tech, dark kitchens, virtual restaurants, food delivery, ghost kitchens, digital franchising, restaurant technology, data-driven brands, Latin America food industry, delivery-only concepts, online food ordering, kitchen-as-a-service, supply chain, restaurant digitization, food market analysis, culinary innovation, delivery logistics, venture capital, food entrepreneurship, gastronomic technology