The Halal Guys began their fast-casual Middle Eastern chain with a single food cart on a New York City street corner. Boy how times have changed.
The restaurant opened its first brick-and-mortar location in 2014, and now it's taking the next step by turning to delivery-only "cloud kitchens' in Redwood City, California to meet growing customer demand.
The rapidly-expanding chain hopes that it will help the brand reach a new customer base without waiting for a franchisee to nail down a property.
"It removes a lot of the tension or pressure to open a brick-and-mortar," The Halal Guys CEO Ahmed Abouelenein told Cheddar.
Cloud kitchens, sometimes called ghost kitchens, are essentially fully-equipped commissaries or commercial kitchens that allow a company to prepare food off-premises.
The company will partner with Redwood City DoorDash Kitchens, the online food delivery services' first shared commissary. The delivery area will cover much of Silicon Valley, including Redwood City, Menlo Park, Palo Alto, Atherton, San Carlos, Belmont, and Woodside.
"We've been looking for sites in Redwood City for over two years now," Abouelenein said. "The real estate is really high there, so it was beneficial for us to open a cloud-kitchen first. "
The Halal Guys, which still operates its original hot dog cart on West 53rd and 6th Avenue in New York City, is no stranger to trying new ways of serving customers. The company has expanded to four carts and 95 franchise locations, with 400 more in development.
Fransmart, a franchise development company, has worked with The Halal Guys throughout its expansion and has supported the move to cloud kitchens as the delivery market expands.
"The Halal Guys has an incredible reputation, and its franchisees are always eager to expand into new markets," said Dan Rowe, CEO of Fransmart, in a press release. "But no two territories are exactly the same, and it's important to grow in a way that's strategic and profitable. The small footprint and flexibility of cloud kitchens enables franchisees to unlock opportunities in desirable markets, while avoiding typical barriers like high rent or infrastructure costs."
The company has also experimented with the cloud-kitchen concept in Los Angeles and Pasadena.
"We are the best at what we do, I'll tell you that," Abouelenein said.
Joe Cecela, Dream Exchange CEO, explains how they are aiming to form the first minority-controlled company to operate an exchange in U.S. history. Watch!
A Michigan judge is putting sponges in the hands of shoplifters and ordering them to wash cars in a Walmart parking lot when spring weather arrives. Genesee County Judge Jeffrey Clothier hopes the unusual form of community service discourages people from stealing from Walmart. The judge also wants to reward shoppers with free car washes. Clothier says he began ordering “Walmart wash” sentences this week for shoplifting at the store in Grand Blanc Township. He believes 75 to 100 people eventually will be ordered to wash cars this spring. Clothier says he will be washing cars alongside them when the time comes.
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
You'll just have to wait for interest rates (and prices) to go down. Plus, this deal's a steel, the big carmaker wedding is off, and bribery is back, baby!
It’s a chicken-and-egg problem: Restaurants are struggling with record-high U.S. egg prices, but their omelets, scrambles and huevos rancheros may be part of the problem. Breakfast is booming at U.S. eateries. First Watch, a restaurant chain that serves breakfast, brunch and lunch, nearly quadrupled its locations over the past decade to 570. Fast-food chains like Starbucks and Wendy's added more egg-filled breakfast items. In normal times, egg producers could meet the demand. But a bird flu outbreak that has forced them to slaughter their flocks is making supplies scarcer and pushing up prices. Some restaurants like Waffle House have added a surcharge to offset their costs.
William Falcon, CEO and Founder of Lightning AI, discusses the ongoing feud between Elon Musk and Sam Altman, and how everyday people can use AI in their lives.
