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After less than a year in operations, Mix Food Hall locations at two Kroger groceries in Hamilton County have been closed, according to several trade industry media reports.
Pasadena, California-based Kitchen United told Restaurant Business that it had closed all remaining Mix Food Hall locations.
That includes locations that opened in Kroger stores early this year at 1217 S. Rangeline Road in Carmel and 9979 E. 116th St. in Fishers.
Mix Food Hall locations offered menu items from several restaurants and filled them through online ordering or through digital kiosks in the grocery stores.
Participating restaurants included Firehouse Subs, Nathan’s Famous (hot dogs), Nekter Juice Bar (smoothies, acai bowls), Saladworks, Wow Bao (chicken bowls, potstickers, dumplings) and MrBeast Burger.
Customers were able to order from individual restaurants or mix-and-match items in one order for pickup or delivery.
Kitchen United described Mix Food Hall as the “nation’s first multi-restaurant ordering to-go experience.”
The Carmel location opened Jan. 30, while the Mix Food Hall in Fishers opened Feb. 13. Indianapolis-based ClusterTruck previously operated food-delivery services at the two Krogers until exiting last year.
In an email, Kroger confirmed the closures and apologized for “any inconvenience.”
There were as many as 17 locations Mix Food Hall locations nationwide earlier this year, in Arizona, California, Illinois, Indiana, New York, Ohio and Texas. But only seven locations were listed on Kitchen United’s website Tuesday, in Indiana, Ohio and Texas.
Kitchen United raised more than $100 million last year to fund its growing ghost-kitchen operations, which consisted of more than 200 kitchens around the county. Investors included Kroger, Indianapolis-based Simon Property Group, Restaurant Brands International and former Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning.
Kitchen United told Grocery Dive that it plans to sell or close all of its physical locations to focus on the software it uses to run those locations.
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So the bottom line: software people discover that running an actual physical business that has to coordinate staff and satisfy retail customers is a lot more challenging than it looks on a screen, so they are retreating to their laptops and Zoom to “focus on the software”.
what a preposterously bad concept. I can’t imagine anyone, under any circumstances, ever wanting to go to a place like this – except to pee.
Like a mall food court back in the day. I even remembering our local c store having a Taco Bell express and Nathan express for a few years. But it sounds like they weren’t prepared to run this type of business
Not a sustainable situation as we see.
I tried it out early on. This company obtained licenses from restaurants who don’t see value in setting up real locations here. If any of these companies like Wow Bao ever did attempt to come here, their image has probably been tainted by the terrible and overpriced food these places served.
Not mentioned in the article is that these are former ClusterTruck locations, which took over Kroger’s on lunch service areas. Honestly Kroger’s own pizza and sandwiches were way better than anything that came after. I imagine these areas will just sit unused for along time.
Loved the concept but the execution was awful (just read the Google Reviews). I was hopeful ClusterTruck would be viable in these locations, but as someone who utilizes the service for lunch, it’s not something I’m going to order again for dinner.
MIX was a huge step backward and I’m surprised they didn’t shut down sooner than this.
I’m sure Kroger has a need to make some kind of revenue on the space they built out and don’t use.
We went once, waited forever for half the food to come out cold and the other half was wrong. Didn’t go back.
Went to the one in Fishers several times and had a great experience. The food order was correct with hot food hot and cold food cold. Convenient – place order and shop. Sorry to see this option leave.
They think the concept if re-functioned to include different restaurants concepts and combinations might work, just pay alot of money for software only.