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Brooklyn-based construction robotics startup Toggle gets $3M seed fund
Toggle, a Brooklyn-based robotics startup, announced today that it scored $3 million in seed funding. The early-stage round was led by Point72 Ventures’ AI Group, with participation from Mark Cuban and VC Twenty Seven Ventures. The series follows a 2018 pre-seed round of $570,000 from its Urban-X accelerator, Urban Us, Accelerate NY / Empire State Development and Perl Street Capital.
The 15-person startup creates robotics that fabricate and assemble rebar. It’s designed to work in tandem with existing robotics and steel fabrication technologies, while speeding up the process up to 5 times, by the company’s count.
Toggle has already begun a soft launch “for a wide range of projects in New York City and the surrounding area,” according to the company. It expects to ramp up toward commercial production over the course of the next year and a half. CEO Daniel Blank tells TechCrunch that the seed round will be used toward R&D and growing the Toggle team.
“This funding will be used to further develop our technology — both the hardware and software — around assembly and fabrication automation, as well as grow the engineering team that supports this development,” Blank tells TechCrunch. “The funding also provides us with a strong foundation for our manufacturing operation which is already supplying services and materials to customers in New York City and the surrounding region.”
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Algolia finds $110M from Accel and Salesforce for its search-as-a-service, used by Slack, Twitch and 8K others
Algolia, one of the group of startups that provides search as a service for websites and apps as an alternative to Google and other search engines, is announcing a major round of funding today to fuel its growth. The startup — which already has more than 8,000 customers, including big names like Twitch, Slack, Discovery and LVMH — has closed a Series C of $110 million, money it plans to invest in R&D around its search technology, including doubling down on voice, and further global expansion in Europe, North America and Asia Pacific.
This Series C is being led by Accel, with other investors in this round including Salesforce Ventures (along with others that are not being named).
The funding is coming at a time of strong growth for Algolia, whose basic premise — to offer an easy-to-use, API-based search service for businesses, as a way to buy search tech rather than build from the ground up using search platforms — has seen a lot of traction.
It was already active in the various regions where it plans to grow: Founded originally in France, Algolia is now based out of San Francisco and has been in Asia since 2014, most recently doubling down on business in Japan, and when it last raised money in June 2017, it had only 3,000 customers.
Algolia had raised $74 million prior to this, with previous investors including Accel, Point Nine Capital, Storm Ventures, Y Combinator, 500 Startups and a number of individuals, among others.
While Algolia is not disclosing its valuation, the prospects for building a big, enterprise-focused search business are there. As a point of comparison, consider the enterprise search company Elastic, which went public in 2018 and now has a market cap of some $6.7 billion after being valued at a mere $700 million when it was still private. Even with 8,000 customers now at Algolia, this is just the tip of the iceberg: Algolia cites estimates that there are some 1.8 billion websites and millions of apps on the market today.
Having Salesforce as a strategic backer in this round is notable, as the CRM giant currently does not have a native search product in its wide range of cloud-based services for enterprises, instead opting for endorsed integrations with third parties, such as Algolia competitor Coveo. The plan will be to further integrate with Salesforce, although there are no products to speak of as of yet.
“Algolia has been a great search innovator and delivers unique experiences for customers across Commerce,” said Mike Micucci, CEO, Salesforce Commerce Cloud. “Algolia’s integration into the Commerce Cloud platform will continue to drive momentum and mutual success with our developer, partner and customer community.”
At a time when search continues to be a critical cornerstone for how an organization presents itself online, and the effort to provide a counterbalance against the power of Google in search continues apace, this essentially gives Salesforce a financial foothold in one of the faster-growing companies in the space.
As my colleague Romain has previously noted in his coverage of Algolia, the company’s unique selling point has been the fact that it provides a super-fast and effective search tool that you can integrate into a site or app easily by way of an API.
This in contrast to solutions that either are built in-house from the ground up, or rely on more lengthy and more expensive integrations to get up and running. Alongside that, Algolia has more recently released supplementary tools, such as search analytics and A/B testing to help optimise results and understand better what it is that site/app visitors want to know.
The funding comes at an interesting time in the world of search. Google has effectively dominated the market for years with an open web approach to ordering the world’s information: the primary point of entry is Google.com, and while you can tailor your results based on your search terms, the selling point is that you can search for anything and everything.
But in more recent years we’ve seen a big shift. Awareness of issues such as privacy and data protection have turned some off from the idea of open-ended browsing powered by advertising, and as we and the internet itself has gotten more sophisticated, sometimes the open-ended search feels too wide for our purposes, and web publishers themselves are less inclined to give over that search traffic to Google.
That’s given rise to more focused vertical search services, and — even more specifically — better search within sites and apps themselves. This is the context that has given rise to Algolia and others like it (for example Lucidworks raised $100 million in August).
The landscape is big, but it remains one that Algolia thinks best served by staying focused.
“We have no plans to build a consumer service,” CEO Nicolas Dessaigne said. “There are a lot of companies like Amazon and Google doing a great job. We like to think of them as partners in a way, educating the whole world about search.”
“Behind a world-class team of search experts and a passionate customer base, Algolia has become the market leader in Search-as-a-Service,” said Nate Niparko, partner at Accel. “Algolia is accelerating innovation in personalized and intelligent search, enabling companies to deliver a great user experience that drives improved business results. We are excited to double down on Algolia and support their mission to lead the search and discovery market.”
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Newly rebranded Thimble raises $22M to bring flexible insurance to the gig economy
Thimble, which offers flexible, short-term insurance to small businesses and freelancers, is announcing that it has raised $22 million in a Series A funding round led by IAC.
Until today, the startup was known as Verifly, a name tied to the company’s initial aim of providing insurance to drone pilots. However, founder and CEO Jay Bregman (who previously founded ridesharing company Hailo) said that thanks to customer demand, the team kept adding insurance for different types of businesses — and now it’s rebranding to reflect that broader vision.
While it’s easy to talk about Thimble customers as being part of the “gig economy,” Bregman noted that these aren’t just people driving for Uber or delivering for Postmates — only 4% of the company’s customers identify as gig economy workers.
“There is this larger thing called the gig economy: People working in flexible ways, on their own terms,” he said.
In fact, Thimble now says it provides liability coverage for customers in more than 100 professions, including handymen, landscapers, DJs, musicians, beauticians and dog walkers. Policies can be purchased directly from the Thimble website or app by the hour, day, week, month or year.
The idea, Bregman said, is that as work becomes shorter term and “more transactional,” it doesn’t make sense to buy an annual insurance policy. To illustrate that point, he noted that 75% of customers didn’t have insurance before buying from Thimble, and that 50% of customers are buying policies to cover a single day or less. And the company says it’s on track to sell 100,000 by the end of the year.
Thimble’s policies are underwritten by Markel, an insurance company that Bregman praised for its “infrastructure and talent.”
At the same time, he said, “We have always been the owner of the product itself. Basically, we worked with carrier partners to bring [our products] to market; the way we do that may evolve slightly as we get older and more mature.”
Thimble has received regulatory approval to sell insurance in 48 states so far. Asked whether the broader political debates about whether gig workers are employees could affect the company’s business, Bregman pointed again to the fact that the vast majority of Thimble customers don’t consider themselves gig workers.
“Our only fear here is that in trying to solve a very particular problem with long-term gig employment, that some of these laws may actually unintentionally scare off or capture legitimate freelancers,” he said.
As for the investment, IAC’s chief strategy officer Mark Stein acknowledged that the digital media holding company doesn’t make many early-stage, minority investments. But he said that deals like this are about “planting seeds.”
“What we think about at IAC is: How can we go about planting seeds of growth for the future? What will become the next ANGI Homeservices? What will become the next Match Group?” Stein said, alluding to two IAC-owned businesses that may get spun off. “We need to find these kinds of large, addressable market opportunities now in the hopes of creating very large, industry-changing companies in the future.”
Previous investors Slow Ventures, AXA Venture Partners and Open Ocean also participated in the round, bringing Thimble’s total funding to $29 million.
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Level Home emerges from stealth with $71M from Walmart and Lennar and a new take on the smart lock
As companies like Google, Amazon and Apple hone their strategies to build the brain that helps you use the smart home of the future, where a new wave of internet-enabled appliances, climate and security systems and other connected objects can be connected and controlled through their hubs, a new smart home startup called Level Home is emerging from stealth today with a big packet of funding, a sales deal, and a hope of bringing something new to the table, by focusing on ways of rethinking old things you own already, starting with the lock on your front door.
The Level Lock, its first patented product, is a system — tested for durability, powered by a basic CR2 battery (average life: one year), equipped with ANSI GRADE 1/A security and encryption — that is fitted into the existing dead bolt on your door to make it “smart”.
Level Home says you can install the Lock yourself using a basic number-two screwdriver — “the most common tool in the American home”, says CEO and co-founder John Martin — or you can engage Level Home’s installation partner, HelloTech, to set it up.
The key thing (heh) with the Level Lock is that you door will not look any different after you install it. But linking it up with HomeKit, you can then use an Apple iPhone or Watch to unlock it (or, you can also still use the physical keys that come with the lock to open the door). Through the app, you can then also provide one-off or repeat access to others and monitor who comes and goes.
“We like to think of this as the first invisible smart lock,” Martin said in an interview. “Why would we take the things away that matter, that are a part of who you are such as the look of your home, just in the name of tech? We have to do a better job of bringing technology into your house, in a way that preserves it as your home.”
Priced at $249 when it goes on direct sale (first in the US), the Lock is available now for preorder on Level Home’s site. But when the Lock does become generally available, you will be able to get it in more places beyond Level Home’s site, and at a lower price.
That’s because, along with the launch of the Level Lock and the company itself, Level Home is also announcing that it has raised $71 million in funding in the years that it has been in stealth.
Investors include a firm called Hut 8 Ventures (not connected to Hut 8 cryptocurrency mining, I’m told), Lennar Homes — the home builder that has worked with the likes of Apple and Amazon to incorporate connected features into new properties, and is a prolific investor in startups focused on the next generation of homes — and Walmart.
The retail giant has been working double time to “level up” to Amazon on the e-commerce front, building a range of services online and increasing the ways in which it can connect with shoppers beyond visits to its large retail locations, and while Level Home is not disclosing any details yet on how it will work with its strategic investors, you could imagine its involvement having more than one touchpoint.
It could be a very strong sales channel for the Level Lock through its many well-visited retail locations.
But it could also be sold potentially as part of a bigger service offering, in competition with something like Amazon Key, where Walmart offers smart locks to its customers as part of a bigger home delivery business.
Walmart started down this road back in 2017, when it first partnered with smart lock maker August to test in-home delivery. Today — Level Home’s launch was timed to coincide with this, it seems — Walmart is taking that out of the test phase with the launch of InHome Delivery.
Going live first in Kansas City, Pittsburgh and Vero Beach, Walmart has chosen Level Lock as its key partner for door locks, installing locks for customers at a price of $49 so that Walmart delivery people can bring items you’ve purchased or pick up those you’re returning even when you are not at home. (The service itself costs $19.99 per month for membership and if you opt for garage delivery you’re sold a different lock, from GoControl.)
“We’re pleased to make an investment in Level Home as they unveil their latest technology, the Level Lock,” said Ashley Hubka, Senior Vice President of Corporate Strategy, Development and Partnerships, Walmart, in a statement. “Smart technology products and home automation provide us with more opportunities to serve customers in new ways today and into the future.”
Partnerships with the likes of Walmart and Lennar sound like a big deal, considering that the company hasn’t tested its product or brand in the market, and the area of smart home hardware is also very crowded already.
Part of the reason for the leap may be because of the background of the founders. John Martin (CEO) and Ken Goto (CTO) have worked together for decades across a range of major tech and other consumer companies including Microsoft, Starbucks and Apple. Underneath them, they have assembled a wider team of about 50 of like-minded people to bring that vision into the physical world.
“Much of the current company are people from Google, Microsoft, and Facebook and others,” said Goto. “We have a shared level of talent and capability.”
To be very clear, Martin and Goto are very far from the image of young startup-hopefuls. Martin told me he didn’t even really like the term “startup.” Instead, the two are taking a measured and very confident approach to the bigger task of thinking about how to approach a new generation of hardware.
For them, it isn’t so much as “disrupting” what is already being used, as it is trying to augment it to bring in a wider population of adopters beyond those who embrace the cutting edge of tech.
“We could have made anything for the connected home, so and we thought for weeks about what to invent,” Martin told me about the pair’s decision to focus first on the front door lock three years ago.
“We had a couple of fundamentals: we wanted products for everyday life, and we didn’t want home automation out of the mainline of what normally happens. We didn’t want lightbulbs to change color for the sake of it, and we didn’t want to appeal just to the tech professional. So we thought entry was the right point to start.”
Or, you could say entry was a good point of entry.
Of course, Level Home isn’t the first to cotton onto this progression of logic. Smart doors and smart locks are everywhere now and have been one of the biggest areas of “smart home” hardware — although ironically, they are not being used all that much.
“When we looked at first generation smart locks, we were offended by how aggressively the experience was departing from how people use locks today.” By this, Martin is referring to things like physical keys, or aesthetically pleasing doors and locks without large electronic objects attached to them.
Indeed, the smart home market has not been a home run so far, but it shows some promise. Overall, smart home devices are services are projected to generate revenues of nearly $74 million this year, nearly doubling to $141 billion by 2023. A stream of hardware sales will underpin that growth, with some 140 million smart locks and other home security devices — the second-biggest category after video entertainment — expected to be shipped this year, growing to 352 million by 2023 globally.
But within that, penetration has not been massive. In Europe, only around 11% of homes have smart home devices in them (not counting phones). In the US, the figure is only slightly higher, at 15%. That speaks to a still-nascent market, but also the fact that many people’s imaginations, and crucially wallets, have get to be captured by what is on offer today.
That spells opportunity for the smart home entrepreneurs, and investors willing to take the leap to back them.
Martin and Goto said that they have a pipeline of several other products that they will be working on, although for now, they are keeping quiet on what those might be.
I’ve searched and can only so far find patents for the Lock system, but the two tell me that the basic idea will be to continue presenting alternative versions of the smart home: to quietly make our lives at home easier and more connected, but without any massively perceptible shifts on the outside, or none that wouldn’t feel natural to the average user.
What might that mean? That could be more “smartening” of dumb things in the way that Level Home has done with the dead bolt, or potentially a kind of skeuomorphic approach, but for physical objects (maybe even in a tip of the hat to their early Apple pedigree). Move slow, don’t break things.
In a market with a lot of options for how to bring more modern objects into the mix that genuinely look like the future, this could be a good differentiator.
“Level Home’s unique approach and technology is a game changer for homebuilders,” said Eric Feder, Managing General Partner, Lennar Ventures, in a statement. “As one of the nation’s leading home builders, Lennar is founded on a long tradition of quality craftsmanship and attention to detail. The Level Lock will transform the smart lock category by allowing home builders to offer innovation without having to compromise on their home experience.”
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True Balance raises $23M to bring its payments app to more small cities and towns in India
South Korean startup True Balance, which operates an eponymous financial services app aimed at tens of millions of users in small cities and towns in India, has closed a new financing round as it looks to court more first-time users in the world’s second largest internet market.
True Balance said on Tuesday that it has raised $23 million in its Series C financing round from seven Korean investors — NH Investment & Securities, IBK Capital, D3 Jubilee Partners, SB Partners, Shinhan Capital and existing partners IMM Investment and HB Investment.
TechCrunch reported earlier this year that True Balance — which has raised $65 million to date, including the $38 million that it closed in its previous financing round — was looking to raise as much as $70 million in its Series C round.
True Balance began its life as a tool to help users easily find their mobile balance, or top up pre-pay mobile credit. But in its four-year journey, its ambition has significantly grown beyond that. Today, it serves as a digital wallet app that helps users pay their mobile and electricity bills, and offer credit to customers so that they can pay later for their digital purchases.
The startup says it has amassed more than 60 million registered users in India, most of whom live in small cities and towns — or dubbed India 2 and India 3. Most of these users are coming online for the first time and True Balance says it has an army of local agents — who get certain incentives — to help first-time internet users understand the benefit of online transactions and start using the app.
True Balance says it clocks more than 300,000 digital transactions on its app each day. The startup, which recently introduced e-commerce shopping services on its app to sell products like smartphones, has clocked $100 million in GMV sales in the country to date.
Charlie Lee, founder of True Balance, said the startup will use the fresh capital to bulk up the offerings on the app. Some of the features that True Balance intends to add before the end of this fiscal year include the ability to purchase bus and train tickets, digital gold and book cooking gas cylinders.
True Balance will also expand its lending and e-commerce services, Lee said. Its lending feature was used 1 million times in three months when it was introduced earlier this year. “We aim to strengthen our data and alternative credit scoring strategy to provide better financial services to our target — the next billion Indian users. Our goal is to reach 100 million digital touch points and become one of the top fintech companies in India by 2022,” he added in a statement.
Even as more than 600 million users in India are online today, just about as many remain offline. In recent years, many major companies in India have started to customize their services to appeal to users in India 2 and India 3 — who also have limited financial power.
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South Korea-based Mathpresso, developer of tutoring app Qanda, raises $14.5 million Series B
Seoul-based education technology startup Mathpresso announced today that it has raised $14.5 million in Series B funding. The company’s flagship app is Qanda, which provides students with math and science help and tutoring. Participants in the round include Legend Capital, InterVest, NP Investments and Mirae Asset Venture Investment.
This brings Mathpresso’s total funding so far to $21.2 million. Its previous round of funding was a $5.3 million Series A announced at the end of last year.
Mathpresso says Qanda (the name stands for “Q and A”) is currently used by a third of students in South Korea. The app launched in markets including Japan, Vietnam, Indonesia and Singapore last year and now has users in more than 50 countries. Qanda uses AI-based optical character recognition to scan math problems. Students take a photo of a problem and upload it to get instructions for how to solve it from the app or tutors.
In a statement, Legend Capital managing director Joon Sung Park said, “As an early investor of China’s leading mobile education companies such as Zuoyebang and Onion Math, Legend Capital has witnessed robust growth of China’s mobile education market. We strongly believe that Mathpresso has the technological and operation capabilities to expand overseas and grasp new opportunities emerging from the digitization of education, such as offering personalized learning for each student.”
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Bird’s chief legal & policy officer is leaving the company
Bird, the $2.5 billion electric scooter business, is losing its chief legal and policy officer. David Estrada, who was hired last year from Kitty Hawk, is joining another mobility company, SoftBank-backed Nuro.
A spokesperson for Bird tells TechCrunch Estrada is leaving the Santa Monica-based company to be closer to his family. Nuro, for its part, is based in Mountain View, CA.
Bird’s former chief legal officer, David Estrada.
Estrada, who previously oversaw public policy at the electric aircraft company Kitty Hawk as its chief legal officer, has been responsible for Bird’s compliance and government relations efforts as the company scaled to over 100 global cities. Prior to joining Kitty Hawk, Estrada spent nearly two years as Lyft’s vice president of government relations and worked as the legal director for Google X, partnering with states on legislation around autonomous vehicles, Google Glass and drone delivery.
Nuro, founded in June 2016, has emerged as a key player in the rapidly-expanding autonomous delivery sector. The company has attracted a whopping $1.03 billion in venture capital funding to date, according to Pitchbook. SoftBank funneled an astounding $940 million into the business earlier this year at an undisclosed valuation. In addition to SoftBank, Nuro is backed by Greylock and the Chinese venture capital firm Gaorong Capital.
The company has been developing a self-driving stack and combining it with a custom unmanned vehicle designed for last-mile delivery of local goods and services. It began piloting grocery delivery in 2018 in the Phoenix suburb of Scottsdale.
Bird has overcome a number of unique hurdles with many more afoot, including pushback from local governments who were aggravated by the sudden appearance of hundreds of scooters. At Nuro, Estrada will have the opportunity to focus on the future of unmanned delivery, another sector faced with regulatory challenges and political barriers.
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WeWork pulls thousands of phone booths out of service over formaldehyde scare
WeWork, the co-working empire once valued at $47 billion before reality struck, plunging the business and its investors into crisis, has another problem to add to its growing pile — one which doesn’t exactly reflect well on its core business of kitting out and maintaining modern working environments.
The problem is a safety concern affecting users of WeWork co-working spaces in the U.S. and Canada. Today the company emailed members in the regions to warn that around 1,600 phone booths installed at WeWork locations have been found to have elevated levels of formaldehyde — which it warns could cause health issues for people exposed to the gas.
WeWork blames the issue on a manufacturer of the booths.
The booths are provided in its co-working spaces for WeWork members to be able to take calls in private — given other common areas are shared by all users.
“After a member informed us of odor and eye irritation, WeWork performed an analysis, including having an outside consultant conduct a series of tests on a sampling of phone booths. Upon receiving results late last week, we began to take all potentially impacted phone booths out of service,” it writes in an email to members.
Affected phone booths “are being taken out of service immediately, and will be removed from your location as soon as possible,” it adds.
In addition to ~1,600 booths it has confirmed are affected, a further 700 booths are being taken out of service in what WeWork describes as “an abundance of caution” — i.e. while it carries out more checks — with the promise of a further update once it has concluded its tests.
Members wanting to know which booths are safe to use in the meanwhile are told to contact the community team at their WeWork location.
WeWork also says alternative quiet spaces will be provided, such as in conference rooms and unused offices.
Discussing the health risks of formaldehyde gas — a chemical which is used in various building materials –WeWork’s email warns: “Short-term exposure to formaldehyde at elevated levels may cause acute temporary irritation of the nose, throat, and respiratory system, including coughing or wheezing. These effects are typically transient and usually subside after removal of the formaldehyde source.
“Long-term exposure to formaldehyde, such as that experienced by workers in jobs who experience high concentrations over many years, has been associated with certain types of cancers. You can find additional information in this FAQ from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.”
The email encourages any WeWork members with health concerns to contact a doctor.
A tipster who sent us the email reported experiencing a sensation of “burning eyes” after using the booths.
They also said several people in their team had experienced the same issue.
“Some complained that they felt nauseous after spending time inside the booths,” the tipster wrote. “I never felt that, but the burning eyes was 100% there for me several times. Scary stuff.”
Reached for comment, a WeWork spokesperson confirmed the formaldehyde issue, saying it’s taking “a number” of booths out of service at “some” locations in the U.S. and Canada — due to “potentially elevated levels of formaldehyde caused by the manufacturer.”
“The safety and well-being of our members is our top priority, and we are working to remedy this situation as quickly as possible,” it adds in a statement.
It is not clear exactly how many WeWork locations contain affected booths at this point.
Nor has WeWork provided more detailed information about how long members might have been exposed to elevated levels of formaldehyde — with its email merely suggesting some of the booths have been in place for “months.”
“The potentially impacted phone booths have been installed over the past few months, exact timing varies based on location,” it writes.
Although clearly the level of exposure will vary from person to person depending on their use of the booths.
The company did not respond to a question asking whether any of its international WeWork locations are affected by the issue.
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Founder’s guide to the pre-IPO secondary market
Ryan Conner is a corporate attorney at Atrium part of the General Counsel Group representing early-stage startups.
The increase in activity in the pre-IPO secondary market means that founders, early employees, and investors are receiving liquidity much sooner in a company’s lifecycle than ever before. For most startups and privately-held companies, liquidity is often an issue for stockholders, as no market exists for selling shares and/or transfer restrictions can prevent their sale. Secondary stock transactions, however, are a way to work around this problem.
Here’s a quick look at how they work and what to keep in mind, especially if you’re going through the process for the first time. (If you’re not familiar, secondaries are transactions in which an existing stockholder sells their stock for cash to third parties or back to the company itself before the company undergoes an exit; traditionally, an exit refers to an M&A or an IPO.)
Offering secondary transactions to founders is a tool VCs have been using to win deals. For example, if a VC promises that the founders will receive $1,000,000 in cash through a secondary sale from a $15,000,000 venture financing round, the founders will likely prefer that VC’s term sheet to a term sheet from a VC that does not offer that deal.
Why would a founder consider a secondary sale of their equity?
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DoorDash opens a shared kitchen in Redwood City
DoorDash is opening its first shared commissary kitchen in Redwood City, Calif., bringing new delivery and pickup options to customers in Peninsula towns, including Atherton, Menlo Park and Palo Alto.
This is part of a broader trend of companies like Deliveroo opening shared kitchens that allow restaurant partners to expand their delivery footprint without dealing with all the expenses of opening a new location.
DoorDash says this first kitchen will be used by restaurants including Nation’s Giant Hamburgers, Rooster & Rice, Humphry Slocombe and The Halal Guys.
The company also says it designs the kitchen spaces in collaboration with its partners, and argues that by putting all these restaurants together in one location, it can offer unique menu items and pairings — at launch, if you order from Rooster & Rice, you can add Humphry Slocombe ice cream pints to your order.
“Given our founders’ Bay Area roots, we are always interested in how technology can change the way food is delivered and shared,” said Rooster & Rice CFO Min Park in a statement. “We were impressed by the overall partnership and scale DoorDash could reach with this concept, and we found the notion of a delivery-only kitchen in Redwood City very appealing as it helps us test out demand in new markets, reaching new customers and areas quickly.”
As part of the launch, the company says it will offer 0% delivery fees to its DoorDash Kitchens partners through the end of the year.
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