With a spicy announcement decrying the influence of “food tech bros” in the delivery space, OOMI Digital Kitchen is a new ghost kitchen opening this month in Dallas, led by the founder of Urban Taco. The new ghost kitchen aims to define what it calls the second wave of the category with a focus on food quality, variety, smart partnerships and strict SOPs for operators.
“The food tech bros saw massive opportunity in food delivery, but they failed to understand that success in the restaurant business is achieved by providing stellar hospitality, not by serving a ‘minimum viable product’ value engineered primarily to be cheap and easy to make,” co-founder Markus Pineyro said.
OOMI Digital Kitchen will offer consumers optionality by providing a variety of on-trend items across cuisine types and day parts. With a menu created expressly for takeout and delivery, all of OOMI’s brands focus on providing both the culinary excitement and the food quality consumers expect from an on-premises dining experience.
“We deliver food that holds up to the rigors of being packaged to-go,” says Pineyro. From the outset of recipe development, we specifically select and test items that don’t suffer from sog and get even better as they carryover cook during transport.”
OOMI Digital Kitchen is focused on providing quality, consistency and value to customers from both OOMI Digital house brands that showcase scratch made, chef-created foods and by partnering and licensing existing area brands.
“I have been a fan of Markus Pineyro and the work he has done in our industry, particularly in our backyard of Dallas, Texas. We are excited for this new outlet for our brand and platform with OOMI. They have earned our trust as a steward of our quality brand. We’re excited to partner with OOMI to make our ‘wiches’ even more accessible in the Dallas market and beyond,” said Which Wich CEO Jeff Sinelli.
“Many of the virtual brands out there today are considered an afterthought by already overworked restaurant staff,” Pineyro said. “They are slinging food that is designed to optimize profit and streamline operations without figuring the needs and desires of the customer into the value equation. That doesn’t engage repeat business!”
OOMI uses emerging restaurant technology to make delivery and pickup more convenient for their customers, but it isn’t central to their operating or food philosophy. It has developed a proprietary app for ordering, connecting to third-party delivery apps, utilizing in-store kiosks, and has leveraged smart pods inside high-density buildings for pickup designed to keep food fresh and safe until go-time.
“Markus and team are old-school seasoned operators obsessed with providing delicious concepts and a high-quality customer experience. As they innovate in the food tech space and launch their new digital food hall platform, Minnow smart pickup pod technology will help OOMI to provide quality, convenience, safety and value to their customers,” said Chuck Thompson, VP sales at Minnow Technologies
National brands like Which Wich, a collection of smaller Texas-based concepts and a carefully curated portfolio of “house brands” will be available for delivery via the OOMI app and third-party delivery apps and pick up from their flagship location opening in mid October.
