Kroger customers can now have restaurant-style meals delivered to their door as the supermarket partners with the cloud-kitchen platform ClusterTruck.
"As we're growing, we were starting to think about strategic partnerships and folks that can take our software platform to the next level," Chris Baggott, CEO and co-founder of ClusterTruck, told Cheddar Thursday. "Kroger — being a Midwestern company like ClusterTruck — they were a natural [fit]."
Cincinnati-based Kroger, the largest supermarket chain in the U.S., is launching the service in four cities. ClusterTruck was founded in one of them — Indianapolis.
Kroger's Business Development Leader Ethan Grob says that his company is trying to capitalize on the larger industry trend of delivery-only restaurants.
"If you've been to a restaurant recently, you see third-party delivery people lining up to deliver these restaurant orders, which can take away from the in-store restaurant experience," Grob said. "Restaurants are increasingly looking to take that food preparation out of their main kitchens and into these ghost kitchens or dark kitchens."
And that's exactly what Kroger's found in ClusterTruck.
"We've built a profitable model by being vertically-integrated, and leveraging software and machine learning to control every aspect," Baggott said, citing ClusterTruck's drivers and food cooked in-house.
"We're really tied tight with Kroger on this," Baggott said of his Midwestern neighbor. "We're very invested in being successful with this together."
Nvidia on Wednesday became the first public company to reach a market capitalization of $5 trillion. The ravenous appetite for the Silicon Valley company’s chips is the main reason that the company’s stock price has increased so rapidly since early 2023.
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A big-screen adaptation of the anime “Chainsaw Man” has topped the North American box office, beating a Springsteen biopic and “Black Phone 2.” The movie earned $17.25 million in the U.S. and Canada this weekend. “Black Phone 2” fell to second place with $13 million. Two new releases, the rom-com “Regretting You” and “Springsteen — Deliver Me From Nowhere,” earned $12.85 million and $9.1 million, respectively. “Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc” is based on the manga series about a demon hunter. It's another win for Sony-owned Crunchyroll, which also released a “Demon Slayer” film last month that debuted to a record $70 million.
The Federal Aviation Administration says flights departing for Los Angeles International Airport were halted briefly due to a staffing shortage at a Southern California air traffic facility. The FAA issued a temporary ground stop at one of the world’s busiest airports on Sunday morning soon after U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy predicted that travelers would see more flights delayed as the nation’s air traffic controllers work without pay during the federal government shutdown. The hold on planes taking off for LAX lasted an hour and 45 minutes and didn't appear to cause continued problems. The FAA said staffing shortages also delayed planes headed to Washington, Chicago and Newark, New Jersey on Sunday.
Boeing workers at three Midwest plants where military aircraft and weapons are developed have voted to reject the company’s latest contract offer and to continue a strike that started almost three months ago. The strike by about 3,200 machinists at the plants in the Missouri cities of St. Louis and St. Charles, and in Mascoutah, Illinois, is smaller in scale than a walkout last year by 33,000 Boeing workers who assemble commercial jetliners. The president of the International Association of Machinists says Sunday's outcome shows Boeing hasn't adequately addressed wages and retirement benefits. Boeing says Sunday's vote was close with 51% of union members opposing the revised offer.
