Jonathan Kaplan, former boss of the company that came up with Flip cameras, has raised $10M in venture finance to start a chain of grilled-cheese sandwich restaurants whose unique twist is that you can place your order in advance using a mobile device or computer and get a QR code that you can present when you're ready to eat.
This may seem like more of a lark than a serious business, but it sounds like Kaplan is really trying to invent a new model for the restaurant business, one that uses mobile technology for an experience that's fast and flexible without sacrificing quality. There are ambitious expansion plans, too. The Melt will open five restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area between August and November, and Kaplan wants to open 500 locations in the next five years. The company has even raised venture funding from famed firm Sequoia Capital — Kaplan wouldn't specify how much, but he said it was enough to open 20 stores, which cost between $500,000 and $1 million. So if you do the math, that's at least $10 million.
And why grilled cheese? Kaplan said it's because "grilled cheese makes you happy." If nothing else, this seems like a good fit for the San Francisco startup crowd — I still remember the excitement when the American Grilled Cheese Kitchen opened in San Francisco's startup-heavy South of Market neighborhood.
Flip creator gets into the grilled cheese business, Sequoia invests
(Image: Campanile's Classic Grilled Cheese with grilled onions and whole grain mustard, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from kellybone's photostream)
