Crave Hospitality Group
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
Crave Hospitality Group was a food delivery and ghost kitchen company founded in 2019 by tech entrepreneur Devin Wade, industry veteran Chef Scott Howard, and Boise restaurateur Barry Werner. It opened its first Crave Collective - a hybrid ghost kitchen food hall - in Boise, Idaho on November 17, 2020, housing 16 restaurant concepts under one roof. Its high-profile restaurant partners included four concepts from award-winning chef Michael Mina (including Mac 'n Cue by International Smoke, his collaboration with Ayesha Curry), Mérité Bakeshop by James Beard nominee Lincoln Carson, and Tony G's by 13-time World Pizza Champion Tony Gemignani. Crave reimagined delivery from the chef's perspective: proprietary technology, order bundling across restaurant partners, an on-site Crave Concierge, and its own fleet of dedicated 'mobile servers' - employee drivers paid approximately three times the minimum wage who made one delivery at a time. It raised $7.3 million in seed funding led by StageDotO Ventures. Crave Collective closed and is no longer operating.
02 / Crave Hospitality Group FAILURE REASONS
Failure factors supported by the current evidence
Co-founder Devin Wade told the Idaho Statesman the Meridian 16-kitchen ghost-kitchen/delivery operation lost its reason to exist after the post-COVID market shifted: restaurants themselves became ghost kitchens, dedicated commissary buildings no longer made sense, and 'ghost kitchens became not a thing anymore,' leaving Crave with technology/model but no operation.
Wade: after COVID disruption evolved, ghost kitchens 'became not a thing anymore' and restaurants themselves became ghost kitchens.
A dedicated 16-kitchen Meridian building 'didn't make sense anymore' once existing restaurants had spare capacity.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Product or service closed
Nation's Restaurant News (29 Nov 2023), citing Michael Mina representatives: Crave Hospitality Group began shutting down in early fall 2022 and got out of food-service operations, closing the Boise/Meridian cloud kitchen.
- Operations ended
Idaho Statesman (15 Nov 2023): co-founder Devin Wade said after a transitional period that summer, Crave Delivery 'no longer exists' — 'It's closed. There's no employees, no nothing.' Parent licensed name/model/tech to unaffiliated Crave Kitchens. NRN: 'the company is defunct.'
04 / CONTEMPORARY REBUILD ASSESSMENT
Difficulty of rebuilding this project today
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.
Overall assessment: Not completed
05 / CAUSAL CHAIN
How the factors connect
- 01
Founded in 2019 in Boise; the first Crave Collective opened on November 17, 2020 with 16 restaurant concepts and its own delivery fleet.
- 02
Closed a $7.3 million seed round from StageDotO Ventures.
- 03
Crave Collective closed and ceased operations in 2023.
- 04
No audited loss figure was publicly disclosed.