Karma Credit: The building of Karma Kitchen's funding solution

Karma Kitchen, one of the leading independent operators of cloud kitchens in the UK, was founded in 2018 by sisters Eccie and Gini Newton. Looking to expand their catering company, they saw the opportunity for growth in the commercial kitchen infrastructure space. Their goal has been to help restaurants service the online food delivery market. 

In 2022, Karma Kitchen started exploring new financing solutions to help their growing restaurants as well as to support the 25% of Karma Kitchen merchants that fall into the underbanked category, and thus have limited access to traditional financing options. The Karma Kitchen team wanted to offer fast and flexible financing options to their licensees, but without the hurdle of long and complex application processes. They wanted to minimise friction in onboarding prospective clients by offering short term financing solutions to help with initial site deposit costs.

Karma Kitchen successfully rolled out “Karma Credit” powered by Lenkie in tandem with the launch of their new Bermondsey site. This solution has helped customers scale within the Karma Kitchen network, without the burden of significant upfront cash outlays 

“Kitchens are messy, chaotic places, so where you can bring in digital solutions like Lenkie provides to improve your customer relationships and service that's worth investing in. Lenkie helps you tap into areas of growth by enabling it in partnership with you.”- Jake Donald, Head of Strategy Karma Kitchen

Lenkie has been integrated into Karma Kitchen’s platform in order to provide a seamless customer journey that made it easy and quick for their merchants to apply and get funding. A landing page was branded with Karma Kitchen’s logo and colour guidelines, making it feel as if the licensees never left the Karma Kitchen ecosystem. This was set up in a matter of days. 

Merchants on Karma Kitchen were able to apply for financing in just a few clicks, select a quote and receive funds in their business account to power their growth. 

Some sellers could be funded on the same day, with the majority of sellers receiving funds within an average of 48 hours.