Underutilised kitchen solution, Tiny Cloud Kitchens see second brand enter Belgian market amid rapid growth in UK

Tiny Cloud Kitchens, the operator of virtual restaurant brands offering restaurants a way to make back sales lost during the pandemic is adding   more sites as it continues to quickly grow amid changes in shifting consumer habits and uncertainty due to Covid-19. 

Tiny Cloud Kitchens provide restaurants everything needed to reach the increasing number of delivery customers by providing kitchen operators with a collection of trendy virtual restaurant brands, simple to prepare menus and a system to operate them as cloud kitchens, seamlessly adding them into the existing kitchens of restaurants, pubs, hotels or other multi-site operators with spare kitchen capacity.

Both Daddy’s Dim Sum and Humpty’s Dumplings have added new locations in their recent expansion as Harpenden, Esher, Bristol, Aberystwyth and Bridgend have all become home to their first Tiny Cloud Kitchens’ virtual restaurant brands. Plus, their first Belgian site, which opened in Antwerp in January 2022 has now added a second brand to their kitchen following a successful Q1 launch of Daddy’s Dim Sum.

Phikul will be the second brand opening in Belgium, the perfect compliment to Daddy’s Dim Sum. Phikul offers a fun and healthy range of hard to resist pan-Asian snack bites, noodles and street food perfect for sharing, like satisfying and flavoursome Hirata and Bao Buns or their top selling Chicken Katsu Yaki Udon Noodles.

Compared to a traditional food franchise, a Tiny Cloud Kitchens brand involves a fraction of the investment, and because it has excellent intrinsic economics and relies on secondary locations while achieving high street sales, it can pay back the investment in a matter of months as opposed to years.

“We have demonstrated the ability to drive profitable brands with relatively low skilled teams and this has been a huge factor in why we are attracting new partnerships quickly.” – comments founder Philip McGuinness – “We have developed and evolved our menus to suit kitchens with varying degrees of kitchen competencies, as well as limitations such as full-extraction and non-extraction sites.”

McGuinness adds: “All we have created and refined in our operation since we started is now available to existing restaurant operators that want to do it as a cloud kitchen or from an existing restaurant, hotel, pub or other hospitality venue. This model offers them an easier way to create more sales and profits, and because there is almost no investment, it is a risk-free proposition”.

Business is booming for Tiny Cloud Kitchens as Nathan Wall is appointed Chief Operating Officer to further drive UK expansion

The Tiny Cloud Kitchens (TCK) simple to produce pan-Asian brands have been in high demand since their launch in 2020. Revolutionising the way its partners can reach the massive growth in demand for both pan-Asian and restaurant quality delivery options since the pandemic.

With rapid expansion, TCK’s owner Philip McGuinness was looking to appoint a Chief Operating Officer with a background strong enough to help escalate the scale of the business potential and given his background Nathan Wall was the perfect fit. 

Recently as the Operations Director of Ei Group Managed Investments, Wall operated a dozen joint ventures in partnership with Industry leaders including Karen Jones, Oakman Inns, Laine Pub Company and Urban Pubs and Bars. Previously, Wall was the Managing Director UK and Ireland Airports for SSP. Wall also served as Operations Director of JD Wetherspoon and was at the forefront of their rapid expansion from 100 to 700 pubs.

Wall looks to do the same with Tiny Cloud Kitchens stating, “The TCK proposition is one of the most exciting innovations that I have seen in UK hospitality, providing a low risk, low cost solution, enabling businesses to best use existing facilities to produce sustainable long term profits. Hospitality, post-pandemic continues to face significant challenges in recruitment and I have been amazed by how simple it is for any member of our partner’s kitchen teams to produce a high quality product and delivery experience.  We are able to deliver essentially a turnkey delivery solution for our partners. Plus, our operations team, recruited from Loch Fyne and Oakman Inns, are able to deliver the comprehensive training and ongoing support our partners need.”

TCK’s unrivalled knowledge of the pan-Asian market has enabled their team to develop high-quality, simple to produce menus that utilise existing kitchen resources. Philip McGuinness exclaimed “This has been paramount in attracting  our existing partners across pubs, hotels and restaurants and will be a cornerstone to further drive our UK expansion.”

Tiny Cloud Kitchens see rapid expansion amid pandemic targeting existing restaurants

Tiny Cloud Kitchens, the operator of virtual restaurant brands offering restaurants a way to make back sales lost during the pandemic has added four more sites as it continues to quickly grow amid changes in shifting consumer habits and uncertainty due to Covid-19. They provide restaurants everything needed to reach the increasing number of delivery customers by providing restaurants with a collection of trendy virtual restaurant brands and a system to operate them as cloud kitchens, simply adding them into the existing restaurant kitchens or the back of house of catering establishments.

Tiny Cloud Kitchens has hired food franchise specialist Seeds Consulting to create a competitive franchise offer and drive the recruitment of qualified franchise partners across the UK.

“Our sites have seen an enormous rise in demand for delivery both through increased customer loyalty and from acquiring new customers as people have shifted how they are eating and who they turn to for their next meal.” – comments founder Philip McGuinness – “With their existing personnel and with no upfront investment, we provide restaurants with successful brands that we have tested since 2017 in our London kitchens. We have designed the system so that all the virtual brands can be operated from their existing kitchens with the same staff and using, for the most part, the same ingredients. Our tech infrastructure allows us to manage all brands and delivery platforms from one dashboard and to optimise the sourcing of delivery drivers thanks to our own driver app. All this combined makes our operation lean labour-wise and we have an industry-leading gross margin. A huge concern to restaurants looking to get into or expand their delivery services  are delivery platform commissions, which we mitigate by having our own e-commerce, which currently accounts for approximately one third of sales”

McGuinness adds: “All we have created and refined in our operation since we started is now available to existing restaurant operators that want to do it as a cloud kitchen or from an existing restaurant, hotel, pub or other hospitality venue. This model offers them an easier way to create more sales and profits, and because there is almost no investment, it is a risk-free proposition”.

Matteo Frigeri of Seeds Consulting, which has been retained by Tiny Cloud Kitchens to manage franchise recruitment, explains: “Compared to a traditional food franchise, Tiny Cloud Kitchens involves a fraction of that investment, and because it has excellent intrinsic economics and relies on secondary locations while achieving high street sales, it can pay back the investment in a matter of months as opposed to years. We see huge potential for this type of innovative food franchise and in fact we have already signed up our first operators, that are due to go live in the next few weeks”.