'Dark kitchens' - a new force to be reckoned with in SA take-away delivery market

Ghost or so-called dark or virtual kitchens are a well-known concept in many overseas destinations. A Cape Town based start-up is pioneering the concept in South Africa and have announced the launch of Darth Kitchen. The company has secured seed capital in excess of R5m to date with a further R30m for expansion. With investment house Silvertree Holdings, co-founder of UCOOK, David Torr and the co-founder of OrderIn, Heini Booysen, Darth Kitchen is hoping to rapidly scale the model over the next few years. Booysen told Biznews that South Africa is an exploding market for take-away food deliveries, and is following the global trend of preferring to order meals that can be dropped off instead of going to restaurants. Judging from the recent announcement by supermarket group Checkers that they will be launching a one hour grocery delivery service, we don’t only want it all, we want it now. - Linda van Tilburg