When it comes to the food delivery landscape, there are a handful of models including the traditional landlord/tenant one, pure-play virtual brands, host kitchens, and licensed brands. Byte Kitchen was founded on the latter model three years ago during Y Combinator’s summer 2021 batch of startups with the idea of helping restaurant brands scale to new territories without any investment. Similar to Kitopi in the Middle East, Local Kitchens in Northern California, Wonder in NYC, and Rebel Foods in India, Byte licensed existing brick-and-mortar restaurant brands, preparing multiple concepts on a single kitchen line within second-generation restaurants. Brands were sourced from near and far, including Oren’s Hummus, The Melt, and Sushirrito. It raised just over $6mm, scaling to three food halls before pivoting to a pure restaurant software business earlier this year. This week, HNGRY sat down with Co-Founder and CEO Divyang Arora to study lessons learned from the multi-brand licensed model and how its battle-tested, proprietary software has led to greener pastures.