Qu and Franklin Junction Partner to Create Industry-First Platform Powering Host Kitchen Marketplace

Host Kitchens Pioneered by Franklin Junction Leverage Qu’s new KitchenUP Solution to Drive Revenues

BETHESDA, Md.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Today Qu announced its partnership with Franklin Junction, the two-sided marketplace featuring Host Kitchen™ and Cloud Concepts™ founded by industry veteran Aziz Hashim to help restaurants increase sales in today’s trying economic times.

Franklin Junction’s platform enables restaurants to expand their delivery footprints through “host” facilities by matching brands with excess kitchen capacity to foodservice brands (“concepts”)—with specifically curated menus—looking to increase production and distribution in untapped geographic areas.

Powering Franklin Junction’s digital marketplace is Qu’s cloud kitchen technology solution, KitchenUP. Franklin Junction and Qu have collaborated to leverage their respective restaurant and technology expertise in launching this first-of-its-kind marketplace, driven by fast, efficient ordering, and omni-channel commerce capabilities.

The KitchenUP platform uses a Qu-1Tablet solution to aggregate digital orders from third-party delivery companies, providing the ability to quickly and easily manage orders through a single interface and send them directly to the kitchen. The marketplace leverages Qu’s 1-Menu platform that includes out-of-the-box unified menu management across brands and channels, with native third-party delivery integrations and multi-brand reporting.

While any cloud kitchen concept can benefit from Qu’s cross-brand platform capabilities, KitchenUP is unique because it enables a single restaurant brand to become a host kitchen to any number of other brands—with each brand’s menus, orders, sales and reports managed and available from a single interface—providing immediate sales and revenue opportunities.

“Our ability to leverage Qu’s native platform and kitchen workflow expertise to quickly build a robust technology solution for our new host kitchen concept made our technology decision very easy,” said Aziz Hashim of Franklin Junction & NRD. “Qu’s direct delivery integrations and multi-brand management capabilities are a perfect match for our needs.”

With Franklin Junction and Qu’s KitchenUP solution, restaurant brands and ghost kitchen operators can now:

• Expand delivery footprints to new guests in untapped markets, increasing sales potential
• Repurpose unused kitchen capacity to introduce new concepts/menus and recoup revenues
• Enable campaigns to drive traffic from third-party to first-party ordering
• Manage production of all digital orders from one device, removing existing ‘tablet farms’
• Build menus one time, in one place with Qu-1Menu platform
• Access holistic multi-brand, multi-channel reporting from one system

“I can’t think of a better concept than Franklin Junction to help restaurant brands survive and thrive during the trying financial times of COVID-19”, said Amir Hudda, CEO of Qu. “We are incredibly excited to partner with Franklin Junction to help promote and power this innovative digital marketplace for brands looking to expand their business without technology strangleholds. Today’s restaurant operators need better digital-only technology solutions and KitchenUP gives them the flexibility to embrace new business models without technology barriers holding them back.”

About Franklin Junction

Franklin Junction created the concepts of the "Host Kitchen"™ and “Cloud Concepts”™ as part of its proprietary 2-sided digital marketplace. The Franklin Junction platform helps restaurants (Hosts) monetize excess kitchen and storage capacity by facilitating the production and online sales of additional menu items. Host facilities are matched with a carefully curated roster of exciting restaurant brands (Concepts) allowing the Host to increase revenue while the hosted brands expand their geographic reach with limited capital expenditure for both. Franklin Junction's proprietary process determines what products can be successfully sold out of host facilities, from branded hot foods to pre-packaged food items. Franklin Junction's approach to last-mile micro-distribution includes hotels and convenience stores. Franklin Junction currently has more than 500 host facilities and 20+ partner brands. For more information, visit www.franklinjunction.com.

About Qu

Qu is transforming restaurant POS beyond its current fragmented state by delivering native technology solutions for in-store and digital order channels. Powered by common APIs and a single core data engine, Qu frees enterprise operators to choose between best-in-class offerings, enabling the first unified food experience that works at the critical intersections of ordering, production, and brand.

Our industry-first architecture, backed by Qu-1Menu and dynamic menu items, finally addresses the menu management mayhem faced by fast casual and quick service restaurant chains. And our data-driven guest experiences help operators unlock new revenue opportunities that drive healthier bottom lines.

Based in Bethesda, MD, Qu is backed by leading restaurant entrepreneurs as well as Silicon Valley investors that have also backed Google, Salesforce, Uber, and Dropbox.