When he was younger, Jacobs thought he’d eventually run his family’s business. But since graduating from USC, he has his sights set on using technology to help restaurants.
“I saw a lot of the opportunities that technology can create for the restaurants,” Jacobs said. “My passion started to shift from thinking about how I can open up a bunch of Georgee’s Pizzas to figuring out how I can help restaurants everywhere.”
This idea led Jacobs to launch Acelerate Inc., a ghost kitchen management company, in 2019. The Santa Monica-based company helps restaurants use idle kitchen space by licensing its software, which enables them to run up to five food brands out of a single kitchen. Along with kitchen management software, Acelerate licenses several delivery-only food brands to restaurants, including Egghead Burritos, Salad Box and Super Smash Burgers.
“So many restaurants are not utilized to their fullest capacity,” Jacobs said. “I felt like the best way to fix that was to put four or five restaurants in every kitchen.”
Though Acelerate is relatively new to the ghost kitchen space, it has caught the attention of big-name restaurants and investors. The company’s brands are in “hundreds” of restaurants, and its software is in “thousands,” according to Jacobs. Its major clients include Applebee’s Restaurants, Fatburger Inc. and Famous Dave’s of America Inc.
In mid-July, Acelerate closed a $14.4 million Series A funding round led by Menlo Park-based venture capital firm Sequoia Capital. As part of the round, Sequoia Capital Partner Ravi Gupta, former chief operating officer and chief financial officer for Instacart, joined the company’s board.
