Food delivery firm Deliveroo spends £5 million dishing up own dining brands

Deliveroo is to create a series of its own restaurant brands to snare hungry Britons with niche cuisines.

The food delivery firm is to use its Editions sites, the kitchens it runs which are not open to the public, to host chefs for new brands. Its first will be a Sicilian-style pizza brand, Nonna’s Square Pizzas, launching in Cambridge this month.

Currently, Deliveroo bikes existing restaurants’ food from their premises or from its 74 UK Editions satellite kitchens on unfashionable sites, allowing restaurants to effectively expand their footprint without opening a new site.

Deliveroo is spending £5 million on the initiative to develop new chefs, help existing restaurant partners and serve areas with cuisines, expected to be more niche than pizza, it knows there is local demand for. There is also the possibility that the sites will be used for collaborations with celebrity chefs.

The firm this month announced it is spending £10 million on free accident insurance for riders, and this week handed £10 million in share options for staff, fuelling speculation of a stock market float in the long term.

Caleb Merkl, vice president of special projects at Deliveroo, said: “At a time when there are so many barriers for chefs wanting to turn their dream into reality, Deliveroo will use our expertise to help restaurants to expand and help budding chefs to have their first shot. For consumers this is nothing but good news, with more amazing, restaurant-quality food available more of the time.”