A wall of tablets in a unit off the ring road
The kitchen is a unit on an industrial estate. There is no shop front and no counter customers, just a hatch where riders collect. Inside, you cook for a burger brand, a wings brand, a loaded fries brand, a vegan brand and a dessert brand, all from the same fryers and grill. Each brand is on Deliveroo, Uber Eats and Just Eat, and each listing has its own tablet or needs its own login on a shared one.
At peak, the tablets chime over each other. The expediter reads orders out by brand name, which the chefs have to map to what they actually cook: the wings brand's buffalo box is the same wings as the burger brand's side, with a different sauce and a different name. When a rider asks for an order under the dessert brand, nobody can find it because it was bagged with the burger order for the same customer.
Why multi-brand kitchens get messy so fast
Every virtual brand multiplies the number of listings, and each listing is treated by the apps as a separate restaurant. That was manageable with one brand. With five, the number of places orders can arrive in outgrows the number of people who can watch them.
The deeper issue is that the brands are fictions for the customer and real for the kitchen only in their packaging. The chefs think in terms of stations and products: grill, fryer, cold section. The orders arrive in terms of brands and menu names. The translation between the two happens in the expediter's head, which is the slowest and least reliable part of the whole operation.
What a mixed-up flow costs
| Failure | What it causes |
|---|---|
| Missed order on one brand's tablet | Auto-rejection and a hit to that brand's rating |
| Brand names read out to chefs | Wrong sauce or build, remakes |
| Orders for the same customer on two brands | Bags combined or mislabelled |
| Riders unsure which brand to ask for | Crowding at the hatch and handover mistakes |
| No view of load across brands | One station swamped while another is idle |
Because each brand has its own rating, a bad night on one fryer can drag down several brands at once, and the apps treat each of them as a separate business with a separate reputation to rebuild.
One kitchen flow across every brand
- We connect every brand's listing on every app to one order feed, through the apps' partner integrations or an order aggregation service that already holds them.
- Each menu item is mapped to the kitchen product behind it and the station that makes it, so the buffalo box and the burger side both show as wings with the right sauce.
- Tickets are printed or shown per station, carrying the brand name in large type so the packer knows which packaging to use, and the order code for the rider.
- A pack screen shows each complete order with its brand, what goes in the bag and which branded bag and sticker to use.
- A pickup board at the hatch lists ready orders by app, brand and code, so riders see their order without asking.
- A live load view shows open tickets by station across all brands, so you can see when the fryer is the bottleneck regardless of which brand the orders came from.
If you already use an aggregator for the connections, we build the kitchen side around it rather than replacing it. We confirm what your app contracts allow before connecting anything.
A Friday in the unit after the change
The tablets sit in a drawer. The grill sees grill items, the fryer sees fryer items, and every ticket says which brand's bag it goes in. The packer follows the pack screen. Riders read the board and pick up without a conversation. When the fryer backs up, you see it on the load view and slow down the brands that lean on it hardest.
- One order feed for every brand and app
- Tickets organised by station, not by brand
- Clear brand packaging instructions at the pack point
- A single pickup board for riders
Is your dark kitchen like this?
- You have a tablet or login per brand per app.
- Orders are read out by brand and translated for the chefs.
- Bags have gone out in the wrong brand's packaging.
- Riders crowd the hatch asking which order is theirs.
- You cannot see station load across all your brands at once.