Former Uber CEO Is Setting Up A New Food Delivery Service

Travis Kalanick, Uber’s former CEO, was dismissed from his company back in 2017 after some major boardroom drama and serious scandals. Now, it seems like he is setting his new startup.

In Kalanick’s new startup, one business unit focuses on the food delivery field. The company has recruited several dozen employees. Among them, some are former Uber employees.

And, to make sure his plan is under the radar, employees are told not to update their new job on their LinkedIn profiles.

A year ago, Kalanick made an announcement that he had acquired City Storage Systems, a real-estate startup with 10100 (Ten One Hundred), his investment fund. Kalanick appointed himself as City Storage Systems’ CEO. City Storage carried an exciting mission: redeveloping distressed real estate, particularly those dying retail locations or underused parking lots and turning them into physical sites supporting online businesses.

City Storage was divided into two units: the CloudKitchens, which constructs kitchens for chefs wanting to establish food-delivery businesses; and CloudRetail, which sets up facilities to support food-delivery-only restaurants.

It is CloudKitchens which appears to have a good start. It provides restaurateurs wanting to have their very own food-delivery service with kitchen space. It can be considered as UberEats’ competitor. Deliveroo, another food delivery service from Europe, also comes up with similar shared-kitchen service called “dark kitchens.”

A Chinese former senior Uber manager is one of Kalanick’s new employees. This former manager used to be an executive working at Ofo, a bike sharing company. Several kitchens from CloudKitchens have been opened in Los Angeles. A few more in London and San Jose are coming up.

Recent years, the food delivery section has been thriving. Postmates has applied for an initial public offering (IPO.) Uber Eats is believed to make a revenue of $10 billion, up from 2017’s $3 billion.

Kalanick is said to be putting a lot of effort in boosting the growth of his food delivery service, so it’s interesting to watch his entry in this kind of market.

10100’s spokesperson refused to comment.