A fractional CTO for food-delivery and ghost-kitchen operators
Architecture, aggregator strategy, hiring for food-delivery and ghost-kitchen founders preparing for Series A and B. $4,500/mo Advisory, $8,500/mo full.
Who this is for
Food-delivery or ghost-kitchen founder, Series A preparing for Series B, where ops tech, aggregator integrations, and direct-order app are each their own headache.
The pain today
- Ops tech, aggregator integrations, and direct-order app fragmented
- Peak-hour architecture buckles under lunch or dinner rush
- POS integration and menu sync inconsistent
- Hiring engineers for food-tech is hard
- Full-time CTO hire is 6-9 months out
The outcome you get
- Fractional food-delivery CTO at $4,500 to $8,500/mo
- Architecture scaling across peak-hour traffic
- Aggregator strategy and integration plan
- Hiring plan for first engineering team
- Investor-facing technical story
Food-delivery CTO topics
Four topics. Aggregators — strategy for Uber Eats, DoorDash, Grubhub including listing optimisation, commission negotiation, direct-order shift. Ops — POS integration, kitchen display systems, dispatch dashboards, inventory. Direct order — customer app, loyalty, marketing automation. Scale — peak-hour traffic handling, multi-location or multi-brand operations. Fractional CTO at $4,500 to $8,500/mo covers all four.
Scaling architecture (traffic peaks, POS integration)
Food-delivery peaks are 3x to 5x normal traffic concentrated in 20 to 40 minutes. Architecture: CDN edge caching for menu browse, server-rendered critical paths, separate high-performance ordering API, horizontal scaling on ordering tier. POS integration with Toast, Square, NCR Aloha requires care on retry logic and reconciliation. At Imohub I handled high-traffic data-heavy patterns; at Cuez I tuned performance 10x. Same discipline on food-delivery peak handling.
Hiring plan and vendor strategy
First engineering hire for food-delivery startups usually senior full-stack for tech lead. Specialists (iOS/Android for customer app, ops engineer for infrastructure) follow. Vendor strategy covers POS partners, aggregator integration middleware (Chowly, ItsaCheckmate), payment processors, loyalty platforms. For founders without technical co-founder, CTO presence accelerates hiring and prevents bad vendor decisions.
Pricing tiers
CTO Advisory $4,500/mo. Fractional CTO $8,500/mo. Pro tier usually right for Series A to B food-delivery founders with significant engineering hiring and scale challenges. 14-day money-back guarantee. Cancel anytime. US LLC invoicing.
Case: GigEasy and Imohub — speed and high-traffic patterns
GigEasy: 3-week investor-ready MVP for Barclays/Bain-backed two-sided platform. Imohub: 120k+ property portal with sub-500ms queries. Between them, food-delivery CTO territory covered — MVP speed discipline plus high-traffic performance engineering. Both patterns directly applicable to food-delivery architecture and scaling.
When a full-time CTO is right
Full-time CTO post-Series A or B when engineering team grows past 10 engineers and dedicated leadership matters. Fractional bridges pre-Series A to early Series B effectively. I help with full-time CTO search and transition when the time comes.
Recent proof
A comparable engagement, delivered and documented.
Built and shipped an investor-ready MVP from scratch
Built the entire technological base and delivered MVP in just 3 weeks, enabling a successful rapid launch and investor demo.
Frequently asked questions
The questions prospects ask before they book.
- How do you handle peak-hour scaling?
- Pre-scale hosting ahead of major peaks. Load test before first seasonal spike. CDN caching for menu browse; separate high-performance ordering API. Horizontal scaling with auto-scale groups. For ghost kitchens expanding, architecture must handle new-market launches without replatform.
- Can you evaluate POS choices?
- Toast, Square, NCR Aloha, Revel — evaluation based on API quality, integration ecosystem, feature fit. For multi-brand ghost kitchens, POS choice affects everything downstream. I lead evaluation and migration if warranted.
- What about aggregator strategy?
- Aggregator commissions (20-30 percent) are the biggest direct-margin lever. Strategy covers listing optimisation, commission negotiation where possible, direct-order shift through marketing and product. For operators dependent on aggregators, gradual direct-order migration is often the right path.
- Can you attend investor meetings?
- Yes. For food-delivery founders raising Series A or B, I attend technical DD and pitch meetings. GigEasy two-sided MVP and Imohub scale credentials help with investor calibration.
- How do you handle multi-brand ghost-kitchen architecture?
- One kitchen serving multiple brands requires careful menu architecture (shared items, brand-specific items), order routing (brand-aware KDS), reporting (per-brand revenue and profitability). Each new brand should be a config change, not an engineering project. Architecture decisions in year one determine scalability.
Ready to start?
Tell me what you need in 60 seconds. Tailored proposal in your inbox within 6 hours.