Taiwanese Ghost Kitchen JustKitchen Begins Trading In Canada

Trading started for the Taiwan-headquartered JustKitchen Holdings Corp. on Thursday (April 15) on Canada’s TSX Venture Exchange under the ticker JK.

JustKitchen is fully steeped in a delivery-only model and is one of the only ghost kitchen companies that has filed for an initial public offering (IPO), according to a company press release. The startup said it has plans of opening two more hubs and 35 Spoke kitchens by next year.

Ghost kitchens sprung from the COVID-19 pandemic in an effort to help people order-in restaurant meals at a time when lockdowns and escalating cases of the virus gripped the world. Much of the restaurant industry is still on life support but slowly inching back as vaccinations roll out and social distancing remains a priority.

Jason Chen, co-founder, CEO, and director of JustKitchen, said the listing was a “great milestone” and thinks the firm might be the first ghost kitchen to file an IPO.

“The rapid growth of our business and the entire ghost kitchen industry are very exciting and it is a privilege to bring the JustKitchen story to the public markets,” Chen added.

JustKitchen said it also has its sights set on pursuing public listings on the U.S. OTC Markets QB exchange and on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange in Germany. 

The PYMNTS February Order To Eat Tracker outlines the delivery trends of fast casual and quick-service restaurants (QSRs), which typically rely on large order aggregators. DoorDash, for example, handled 35 percent of all meal deliveries in the U.S. in 2018, followed closely by Grubhub’s 30 percent take of orders.

As the restaurant industry continues to rebound, many eateries are still eyeing the advantages of off-premises offerings. By way of example, the QSR franchise Noodles & Company said 62 percent of its 2020 sales were by way of off-premises takeout orders.

Ghosts kitchens were launched as a way for eateries to scale mobile order-ahead (MOA) and order-to-eat (OTE) and meet the public’s escalating digital demand amid the global COVID-19 pandemic.