Peter Schatzberg

Peter Schatzberg is the founder and CEO of Sweetheart Kitchen.

He is the pioneer of virtual kitchens by launching rapidly evolving iterations of his business model on three different continents since creating the first “delivery only” multi-brand virtual kitchen (Green Summit Group) in 2013 in New York City. Green Summit Group (GSG) had a portfolio of 12 food brands and scaled to US$10 million in run rate within three years of launching with just $3 million of funding. Schatzberg left GSG in 2017 to explore opportunities outside the United States where food delivery platforms (aggregators) and investors alike were more receptive to the innovative virtual kitchen model.

Most recently, Schatzberg started Sweetheart Kitchen (bySWHK), a collection of 21 unique food brands that incorporate proprietary routing and manufacturing software into the kitchen procurement, production and assembly processes. His Six-Sigma (lean manufacturing) approach to kitchen design results in reduced lead times, less process variation and a measurement system that tracks operations performance remotely and in real time. His creative approach to brand development, menu design, and ingredient selection results in high inventory turnover ensuring ingredients are always fresh, high quality, and low cost.

Schatzberg recruited an executive team from companies including Emirates, Careem, Nestle, GE Oil & Gas, and Moodys and has ambitious plans to scale bySWHK to several hundred units by 2021 across the Middle East and Asia. To date, the company has raised over $34 million from strategic investors in the food industry. Since launching in Dubai in March 2019, the company has seven Dubai units live, four in Kuwait, and one central manufacturing unit in each country, while Schatzberg is currently planning Saudi expansion.