The Food Lab, an Egyptian cloud kitchen provider, raises $4.5m in pre-seed funding round

The Food Lab, an Egyptian cloud kitchen provider, announced that it has raised $4.5 million in a pre-seed funding round led by 4DX Ventures, Nuwa Capital and Shorooq Partners. Other participating investors include Al Faisaliah Group and Samurai Incubate.

Launched in 2020 by Kareem El Daly, Ahmed Osman and Wesam Masoud, The Food Lab partners up with restaurants to help them scale and grow hassle free by taking over the delivery operations and do co-marketing activities to help them grow. It empowers restaurants to expand their reach & improve operational efficiencies through managed shared kitchens

In a discussion with Techcrunch, co-founder Ahmed Osman claims that its platform allows “existing restaurant owners to grow exponentially and new brands to go from concept to launch within just 10 days.”

“What we want to do is to be that connector; we want to connect that closest cuisine or closest kitchen to the farthest appetites. Cloud kitchens may be the one thing we’re starting with and doing some procurement, but we’re an infrastructure play,” he adds.

“We try to embed ourselves in a way that we help them [restaurants] grow. If they have issues, we’re using our technology platform and our knowledge to help them do that and remove all those barriers. That’s really what we’re trying to do.”

Though the startup started with one kitchen in 2020, the company claims more than 50 restaurants and food brands use The Food Lab, and 175,00 end customers have made orders from its kitchens. The Food Lab charges its clients a percentage of their revenues, including aggregation, marketing and procurement fees. its revenues have been growing 25-35% month-on-month as a result.

The pre-seed funding is intended for expansion within Egypt and to lay the foundation for entry into the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa.

“Other than that, we have hiring plans for some community roles and operational positions. And the third thing is for us to develop further our technology solutions for our customers, partners and customers,” according to El Daly, co-founder and president.