Cloud Kitchen Market Size And Trends

The global cloud kitchen market size is likely to be valued at US$ 82.1 billion in 2025, reaching US$ 183.5 billion by 2032 and exhibiting a CAGR of 12.4% during the forecast period 2025-2032. The widespread trend of ordering meals tuned to specific occasions, such as late-night cravings, in urban areas is amplifying opportunities for cloud kitchens to build time-specific and targeted menus for a variety of audiences.

Recent Market Trends

• Hyperlocal expansion of cloud kitchens is the newest feature in last-mile delivery services, with brands such as Rebel Foods and Kitchen United investing in micro-kitchen spaces in tier-2 and tier-3 cities across India and Southeast Asia.
• AI-driven tools that forecast demand have reduced food waste by a considerable amount, encouraging virtual kitchens to integrate real-time traffic, weather, and consumer behavior data into their operations.
• The rise of virtual food courts and multi-brand cloud kitchen ecosystems is resulting in a higher per-location revenue, with entities such as Taiwan-based JustKitchen reporting a 36% year-on-year increase in average order value (AOV) in Q1 2025.
• Licensing and brand franchising within cloud kitchens has accelerated, enabling global quick service restaurant (QSR) chains, such as Wendy’s, to test market-fit via asset-light models.

Cloud Kitchen Market in the News

• July 2025: Greek foodtech startup STIQ, based in Athens, secured € 20 million in funding from the European Investment Bank (EIB) to scale up its AI-powered cloud kitchen platform across Europe. The investment is structured as venture debt with quasi-equity features. STIQ, founded in 2022, operates a virtual restaurant model that integrates software, logistics, and food production into one platform supporting multiple digital restaurant brands. Its platform uses artificial intelligence for demand forecasting, dynamic menu engineering, smart routing, and grouped deliveries, which reduce CO2 emissions and delivery times.
• July 2025: Curefoods, a Bengaluru-based cloud kitchen company known for brands such as EatFit, CakeZone, and Sharief Bhai Biryani, filed its Draft Red Herring Prospectus (DRHP) with SEBI to raise INR 800 crore through an initial public offering (IPO), marking potentially the first IPO by a cloud kitchen operator in India. The company plans to allocate approximately INR 152 crore of the fresh proceeds toward expanding across various formats, including new cloud kitchens, restaurants, kiosks, and central kitchens, with a focus on its recently acquired franchise, Krispy Kreme. Another INR 127 crore is earmarked for debt repayment, and some funds will be used to increase stakes in its subsidiaries.
• July 2025: Qatar introduced a comprehensive regulatory framework to govern cloud kitchens, aiming to foster innovation and support the growth of digital food ventures. Cloud kitchens, which operate solely through online food delivery platforms without dine-in services, benefit from lower operational costs and quicker expansion opportunities, necessitating their regulation. For example, to obtain a license, investors must first register a company via Qatar’s Single Window Services Portal, specifying food preparation or catering as their business focus. These regulations are designed to streamline licensing, guarantee safety and quality, minimize procedural errors, and promote the rapid, sustainable growth of cloud kitchen businesses within Qatar’s evolving digital food ecosystem.

Segment Analysis

Among kitchen types, independent cloud kitchens are projected to capture 63.2% of the market revenue share in 2025. As agile, asset-light operators tailoring their products and services to hyperlocal food preferences, these facilities are also able to offer specialized, delivery-only menus, demonstrated successfully by Indian brands such as Golia Butter Chicken and Biryani By Kilo. This segment is accelerating in tandem with the online food delivery boom, where speed-to-market and menu differentiation are crucial.

At the same time, commissary or shared kitchens are gaining prominence in high-rent cities such as Los Angeles and London, providing fully equipped facilities at a fraction of traditional restaurant startup costs. On the business model front, franchised cloud kitchens are enabling rapid scale-up while minimizing operational risk. Standalone cloud kitchens, meanwhile, are leveraging direct-to-consumer (D2C) models to cultivate niche brand identities and control customer data, as shown by The Momo Co., which tripled its repeat order rate from 2022 to 2024 through hyperlocal offerings.

Regional Analysis

The regional dynamics of the cloud kitchen market are being governed by economic maturity of countries, changes in consumer behavior, and shifts in regulatory landscapes. Asia Pacific is set to dominate the cloud kitchen market share in 2025 and beyond, powered by soaring smartphone ownership, increasingly dense urban centers, and a rapidly transforming venture capital space. India, China, and Southeast Asia are hotbeds for innovation, with operators such as Rebel Foods scaling multi-brand cloud kitchen networks that integrate AI, logistics optimization, and centralized supply chains.

In North America, the market is transitioning from pandemic-era overexpansion to strategic consolidation, as high operational costs have forced major players such as Kitchen United to streamline their businesses. Across Europe, the cloud kitchen ecosystem is led by players such as Deliveroo Editions that are adopting hybrid models that co-locate virtual brands within existing restaurants to mitigate rising costs. Urban saturation is pushing expansion into Tier 2 cities, while sustainability and kitchen automation are becoming critical differentiators, as evidenced in Taster’s € 8 million funding to enhance operational efficiency.

Industry Players

The highly charged competitive milieu of the global cloud kitchen market is a product of the aggressive scaling strategies implemented by multi-brand virtual kitchen startups, infrastructure investments by food delivery aggregators, and tech-driven alliances with established restaurant chains. Industry leaders are actively deploying asset-light models and leveraging AI-powered menu optimization, predictive analytics, and centralized supply chains to drive operational efficiency and customer precision. This multilateral convergence of player roles is transforming the market into a vertically integrated ecosystem. For instance, REEF Technology repurposes urban parking lots into delivery-only kitchens, while Kitchen United partners with retailers to embed multi-brand kitchens within grocery stores. Competitive forces such as these are redefining the virtual kitchen business model.