Customers pick up their food curbside so drivers don't have to get out of their cars. To increase delivery trips, ClusterTruck cuts travel time in two ways. And we do that by making sure they're as highly utilized as possible." Leverage technology to ensure food doesn't 'die quickly' in transit "So we want to make sure that our couriers get paid well. "If the model does not work for our courier-delivery drivers, it's not going to work for the business as a whole," Howenstein said. The more trips, the more tips, and the happier the drivers, Howenstein and Baggott both said.
That's more than twice as many trips as to third-party delivery couriers, Howenstein said. The drivers make about four to six deliveries an hour. Instead, it deploys its own fleet of gig drivers. Roughly five employees (cooks and managers) work per shift.īut unlike rival ghost kitchens, ClusterTruck does not work with third-party-delivery apps like DoorDash and Grubhub. Low real-estate and labor costs also help.įoods are prepared in ghost kitchens ranging from 800 square feet to 4,800 square feet. That's a feat that has eluded most delivery apps for years, though Uber Eats recorded adjusted profit in its latest quarterly earnings. Profits come by shunning third-party-delivery appsīrian Howenstein, the chief operating officer of ClusterTruck, told Insider that all locations "are profitable with zero delivery fees" for customers. The casual dining chain's voluminous menu would serve as a template for ClusterTruck's broad menu of about 80 items - including breakfast burritos, chicken wings, pizza, burgers, poke bowls, soups, and salads.ĬlusterTruck recently began opening ghost kitchens inside Kroger stores in the Midwest. So he hired a restaurant-industry chef who cut his teeth at the Cheesecake Factory.
Clustertruck promo license#
Initially, Baggott thought he would license recipes from local food trucks, but he soon realized that wouldn't work if a brand suddenly went out of business. Today, the competition is fierce with rent-a-kitchen operations like Kitchen United, CloudKitchens, and Reef Technology, which license with brands like Wendy's and Burger King and sell their food from mobile kitchens. In doing so, the startup became one of the first ghost-kitchen operations to exist before the term was even coined.
The first ClusterTruck kitchen opened in downtown Indianapolis in 2016 inside an old office building that Baggot converted into a dark kitchen. ClusterTruck creates delivery-only brands, prepares the food in ghost kitchens, and leverages technology to deliver the meals using its own fleet of gig workers – bypassing third-party-delivery apps.ĬlusterTruck's broad menu features about 80 items.Ĭreate a broad Cheesecake Factory-inspired menu So Baggott co-founded ClusterTruck in 2016, a delivery-only restaurant company that, like his farm, cuts out the "middleman" by selling food directly to consumers. Third-party-delivery operators can charge restaurants about 30% of orders in commission fees in cities without caps in place. "That sort of pissed me off," he told Insider. Baggott, whose farm sells pasture-raised pork, beef, and chicken directly to the public, knew that was hogwash. Yet Baggott said he kept hearing delivery apps like Grubhub say they generate "incremental revenue" for restaurants. Consumers blame restaurants for soggy food and late deliveries, but most damaging are the third-party-delivery fees that kill thin restaurant profits. After launching the business, the tech veteran turned restaurateur immediately saw the pitfalls of food e-commerce. Six years later, in Indianapolis, he opened one of America's first ghost kitchens to repair another food problem: third-party delivery.īaggott owns a grass-fed burger restaurant in Greenfield, Indiana, that serves his farm's beef.
Clustertruck promo software#
Software entrepreneur Chris Baggott launched a sustainable cattle farm in 2010 to fix a broken food-supply system. The startup is profitable because it controls everything from food recipes to delivery.Tech entrepreneur Chris Baggott co-founded ClusterTruck to fix third-party delivery.ClusterTruck is pioneer in the ghost-kitchen space, launching in Indianapolis in 2016.
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