Saudi Arabia's sovereign-wealth fund called Public Investment Fund, or PIF, has just invested $400 million into Uber (NYSE:UBER) founder Travis Kalanick's new venture called CloudKitchens.
The idea of CloudKitchens is that the company will purchase cheap real estate to transform into commissary kitchens called "ghost kitchens" that it will rent to restaurants already providing food delivery services to prepare the meals in. The catch is that these restaurants would exclusively make the food in these kitchens to be delivered, and then pass on orders to services like Grubhub and Seamless.
"Everything about the restaurant experience is designed for walk-ins and reservations," the company said. "And while delivery is an increasing percentage of the business, many operators are forced to trade-off the dine-in experience with a booming delivery business."
What's more is that CloudKitchens itself also runs its own food brands within the commissaries, with names like Excuse My French Toast, Egg the F* Out, and B*tch Don't Grill My Cheese.
The deal values CloudKitchens at about $5 billion, a number that could be inflated given the Saudis have already backed Kalanick before with Uber and are more likely to pour more money into his ventures.
Kalanick has previously worked with Yasir al-Rumayyan, the fund's governor, in 2016 when he funneled in a $3.5 billion investment in Uber. When Kalanick was ousted the following year for ineffective management, al-Rumayyan remained a staunch supporter.
"The amount of revenue that restaurants have access to is limited to the number of tables they have in their restaurant as well as how quickly they can provide meals to customers and how often those tables turn over," Ana Mahony, the head of Uber Eats for US cities, said in an interview. Delivery enables restaurants "to, within the same fixed-cost structure, not just make money off of in-store sales, but also have a second avenue to sell their meals," Mahony said.