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- 🤯 Mojos Kitchen: The F&B Grind That Broke Them
🤯 Mojos Kitchen: The F&B Grind That Broke Them
They hit profitability, landed hotel contracts, scaled fast — then collapsed from exhaustion. Here’s the hidden F&B trap that killed them.
Admond Lee
December 07, 2025
Hey Founders,
Welcome to The Runway Ventures — a weekly newsletter where I deep dive into failed startup stories to help you become the top 1% founder by learning from their mistakes with actionable insights.
Today’s story is quite special. Because I’ve the chance to talk to Shrayas (co-founder of Mojos Kitchen) to uncover how a fast-growing F&B startup still burned out. Let’s get to it! 🚀
Founder Interview with Shrayas (co-founder of Mojos Kitchen)
Today at a Glance:
☠️ 1 Failed Startup → Mojos Kitchen
⚠️ 2 Mistakes → Bootstrapping a capex-heavy, thin-margin business for too long
🧠 3 Lessons Learned → Build systems + team (not a business that collapses without you)
🔗 The Runway Insights → 9 reasons your ICPs don’t book a demo
💰 Southeast Asia Funding Radar → Tonik raises $12M (Pre-Series C) to offer more consumer loans and deposits in the Philippines
☠️ 1 Failed Startup: Mojos Kitchen
🚀 The Rise of Mojos Kitchen
🇲🇾 Founded by Gaurav Joshi in April 2019 and later joined by Shrayas Saranathan as a co-founder in mid-2020, Mojos Kitchen was a cloud kitchen based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, offering multi-cuisine meals through a central kitchen and app-based delivery model.
🕺🏻🕺🏻 Founders’ Story
In April 2019, Gaurav Joshi quit his corporate job to start Mojos Kitchen, a central kitchen serving healthy Arabic meals to office workers in Kuala Lumpur.
Initially operating through multiple kiosks near office hubs, the idea was to offer quick, nutritious food for busy professionals.
Shrayas Saranathan, then heading a corporate role abroad, turned down an early invite to join. But after being separated from his family during the COVID-19 lockdown, he returned to KL in mid-2020 and joined Mojos as a co-founder — just as the company was on the brink of collapse and about to pivot.
The Problem — 🥗 Busy professionals in Kuala Lumpur had limited access to healthy, affordable, and convenient meal options, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Solution — 🍝 Mojos Kitchen initially operated physical kiosks serving Arabic cuisine near office areas.
Post-COVID, they pivoted to a full cloud kitchen model offering multiple cuisines via delivery.
They diversified into B2C meal deliveries, B2B corporate meal boxes, hospital catering, and event catering.
🍱 In short, Mojo was a cloud kitchen startup in Kuala Lumpur that delivered multi-cuisine meals to consumers and corporate clients, evolving from physical kiosks into a tech-enabled, centralised food production and delivery operation.
 Shrayas Saranathan (Co-Founder & CEO of Mojos Kitchen) | 🚀 When Mojos Kitchen started, it quickly grew from just one kitchen to 8–9 kiosk outlets across Kuala Lumpur, each serving up Mojos signature meals to a growing fanbase of customers. The traction was promising. Office patrons loved the affordable healthy food, and word-of-mouth was strong. |
🦠 But then came the plot twist that no one saw coming — the COVID-19 pandemic struck in March 2020. Almost overnight, Malaysia went into lockdown and offices emptied out. Under a Movement Control Order (MCO) starting 18 March 2020, businesses had to shut and people were stuck at home.
💸 Suddenly, Mojos Kitchen’s revenue went to $0 overnight because no one went to office. The team had to lay off staff and throw out stock.
We saw meat rotting in the refrigerator for days and months.
☁️ So, in August 2020, Mojos Kitchen 2.0 was born. They pivoted to a true “cloud kitchen” model — a one-stop food delivery service offering several cuisines, operated in-house.
They spotted an opportunity in the pandemic → with everyone stuck on endless Zoom webinars and virtual events, companies were looking for ways to keep employees engaged (and well-fed). Mojos Kitchen started offering “meal box” deliveries for corporate webinars.
🏔️ At its peak, Mojos Kitchen:
Landed B2B clients like Lazada, Lalamove, Maybank, and Dutch Lady.
Grown its user base to over 1,000 customers on its app.
Expanded to multiple revenue streams (B2C deliveries, corporate orders, and healthcare catering).
🏨 Secured a contract with a major international hotel chain to supply daily breakfast boxes for guests.
This was huge. The volume of meals exploded practically overnight.
The menu complexity was insane — on a given morning, they might have to produce Malay nasi lemak, Chinese vegetarian noodles, North Indian chicken curry, and Western omelette platters simultaneously to satisfy the hotel’s diverse clientele.
To meet the 6:00am delivery deadline, the Mojos Kitchen crew (including the founders themselves) would start work at 2:00am, chopping, cooking, and packing furiously.
🥳 By early 2022, Mojos Kitchen was finally operating profitably.
After nearly three years of grind, Mojos Kitchen had proven its model and achieved the kind of success many F&B ventures only dream of, serving thousands of meals and touching lives along the way.
📉 The Fall of Mojos Kitchen
Mojos Kitchen had survived COVID, pivoted successfully, landed a major hotel contract… and then decided to sell the company.
Why?
🏃🏻♂️ Because the founders were running on fumes.
🫸🏻 Because behind the booming orders was a team pushed past its limits.
📌 Here’s what happened to Mojos Kitchen:
We wanted to prove the model first — turn profitable, then pitch. The only thing that happened was that we got burnt out first before we could go for funding.
🥗 Makan, makan, makan
Apr 2019 — Mojos Kitchen was founded in Kuala Lumpur by Gaurav Joshi, who left his corporate job to start a healthy meals venture.
He opened a central kitchen focusing on Arabic cuisine and began serving office workers in the KL city center.
Late 2019 — 🔥 The startup rapidly expanded to about 8 kiosk outlets across Kuala Lumpur, reinvesting profits to reach more customers.
Mojos Kitchen gained a loyal following for its tasty and wholesome lunch offerings.
Mar 2020 — 🦠🇲🇾 COVID-19 lockdown (MCO) hit Malaysia, forcing Mojos Kitchen to shut down all operations.
Offices closed nationwide, kiosks were abandoned, and the central kitchen was inaccessible for months.
The team was downsized as the business effectively paused.
Aug 2020 — ✌🏻 After several hard months, Mojos Kitchen pivoted to a cloud kitchen model once lockdown restrictions eased.
💪🏻 Shrayas Saranathan joined as co-founder.
They re-opened the kitchen with a skeletal crew and launched multiple cuisines for delivery via Mojos Kitchen’s mobile app.
Late 2020 — 🚀 The company rolled out new services to adapt to the pandemic era.
🛵 It delivered meal box packages for virtual corporate events and even partners in community initiatives to feed people in need.
Mojos also secured a contract to supply meals to a local hospital.
2021 — Mojos Kitchen steadily grew its customer base (over 1,000 app users) and revenue streams.
As Malaysia reopened, it began catering for small events and parties.
The founders hustled on all fronts, personally ensuring quality and service for each order.
Late 2021 — 🤯 Mojos Kitchen landed a major hotel chain contract to provide daily breakfast boxes for guests.
This deal dramatically increased volume, requiring pre-dawn cooking of hundreds of meals.
The business achieved operational profitability for the first time, marking a high point for the venture.
🥵 The F&B nightmare
Mid 2022 — 😮💨 After several intense months, the founders experienced severe burnout.
Running the demanding hotel contract and multiple services stretched them to their limits physically and financially.
They began exploring an exit, as continuing long-term feels unsustainable.
Late 2022 — 🤝🏻 Mojos Kitchen was acquired by a local F&B investor in an all-cash buyout.
Shrayas and Gaurav stepped away from the company, concluding Mojos Kitchen’s tumultuous journey after roughly 3 years.
At some point of time, we couldn’t spare that much time for our kids. We couldn’t juggle anymore.
🙏🏻 In the end, Mojos Kitchen failed to sustain itself not due to lack of demand, but due to the toll on its people and some strategic missteps. The founders exited earlier and with less fanfare than they had hoped, trading potential long-term success for their own well-being.
Mojos Kitchen may have closed its doors, but it left behind valuable lessons: passion for food isn’t enough without preparation for hard times, and even a “successful” business can crumble if founders are running on empty.
My parents are both hawkers who have been running their noodle stall for 10+ years. I’ve seen firsthand how hard it is to build, maintain and grow a F&B business.
If you’re running a F&B business, you have my respect 🫡
Want to learn more about Mojos Kitchen’s story?
⚠️ 2 Mistakes
Shrayas Saranathan & Gaurav Joshi (Co-Founders of Mojos Kitchen)
Mistake 1: Heads down, zero networking
We were never able to network within the industry during the journey because we were so heads down and focused and working to put things together.
💭 Shrayas and his co-founder were so deep in day-to-day operations (staff, menus, orders, hotel contract, hospital meals, app, etc.) that they basically never lifted their heads to ask:
Who else in the ecosystem should we know if we ever need money, partners, or a buyer?
So when burnout hit and they finally decided to sell, they had:
No investor relationships
No warm intros to strategic buyers
No clear list of people to call
😮💨 They got 4 interested buyers, 3 ghosted, and 1 closed. With better networking, that could have been 10–15 conversations, multiple offers, and a higher valuation instead of a “we’re tired, let’s just get this done” exit.
They didn’t fail because the business model sucked — they failed because they ran out of options.
Mistake 2: Bootstrapping a capex-heavy, thin-margin business for too long
We had invested, you know, more than… million ringgit of our personal money in this. So the burn was slowly, slowly getting to us.
💸 Mojos Kitchen was funded with over RM 1 million of the founders’ own money.
At the same time, they:
Invested in a physical central kitchen
Expanded from 1–2 kiosks to 8–9 kiosks in 1.0
Then in 2.0, ran:
Multi-cuisine production
Their own app
Corporate meal boxes
Hospital meals
Catering
Subscription meals
All this in F&B — a sector where:
Margins are thin
Working capital is always tight
Staff churn is high
Equipment + rent + compliance is not cheap
🩸 They were rightly proud of hitting profitability. But because they bootstrapped everything, the capex hole was too deep, and they never really “earned back” what they put in.
They waited to raise or partner after proving profitability.
By the time they hit that milestone, they were already emotionally and physically finished.
🧠 3 Lessons Learned
Lesson 1: Networking is risk management
Mojos Kitchen ran for ~3 years with almost no deliberate networking in the F&B and startup ecosystem. When they needed buyers or investors, they had to scramble from a cold start.
🤝🏻 Meanwhile, Malaysia’s cloud kitchen and food delivery ecosystem was exploding with players like Cookhouse, My Ghost Kitchen, COOX, GrabKitchen, KitchenConnect, KitchenCo, Foodpanda and GrabFood — all building their own partner networks and multi-brand setups.
These were not just “competitors”. They could have been partners, acquirers, or co-investors.
🌮 Key Takeaways:
📍 Map your F&B ecosystem early
Aggregators → GrabFood, Foodpanda, ShopeeFood.
Cloud kitchen operators / commissary kitchens → Cookhouse, My Ghost Kitchen, COOX, GrabKitchen, etc.
Corporate customers → banks, tech firms, hospitals, hotels, co-working spaces.
Other founders →: people one or two steps ahead of you in F&B.
☕️ Build a “light-touch” networking system
One industry coffee chat a week.
One WhatsApp follow-up after each big project (“Hey, if you ever hear of anyone looking to acquire or invest in F&B assets, keep us in mind.”).
Keep a simple Notion/Sheet: name, role, org, last contacted, and how you can help them.
🧠 Start “exit conversations” way before you want to exit
Not “we’re selling,” but:
“We’re building an interesting foothold in X segment.”
“Thinking about scaling or partnering next year.”
You want people already familiar with you when the time comes.
Lesson 2: Don’t wait until "after we’re profitable” to think about funding & partners
The Mojo plan was very “responsible corporate person” energy:
Let’s prove the model, become profitable, then go to investors for a bigger round.
🙏🏻 Sounds logical. In reality:
F&B is capital- and labour-intensive.
Profitability took a long grind and a lot of personal cash.
By the time they got there, the founders were too burnt out to play offence.
💰 They could have:
Brought in a small angel round earlier.
Partnered with a hotel group, hospital operator, or cloud kitchen platform.
Used that capital to hire more ops staff, managers, or even another co-founder-level operator.
Instead, they carried everything on their backs until they couldn’t anymore.
🌮 Key Takeaways:
🫸🏻 Separate “operational readiness” from “emotional readiness” to fundraise
Start talking to investors / strategic partners 6-12 months before you “need” the money.
You don’t have to raise immediately — but build familiarity.
🏦 Think beyond VC
Strategic investors: hotel groups, mall operators, healthcare groups.
Revenue-based financing: especially if your revenue is predictable.
Joint ventures with landlords / property owners.
Partnerships with cloud kitchen operators (you bring brand + ops, they bring infra).
📈 Create funding “trigger metrics”
Example triggers:
“When we hit RM X monthly revenue for 3 months, we’ll raise RM Y.”
“Once we secure 2 large B2B contracts, we raise to build out team, not just survive.”
Lesson 3: Build systems + team (not a business that collapses without you)
Mojos Kitchen worked — but only as long as the founders were willing to:
Wake up at 2am
Do heavy lifting (literally and figuratively)
Plug every leak personally
💪🏻 The entire operation rested on one fragile foundation: the founders’ stamina.
Shrayas and his co-founder weren’t just running the business…
They were the business.
🌮 Key Takeaways:
✌🏻 Start with fewer SKUs and fewer cuisines
Pick one or two cuisines that travel well, reheat well, and share ingredients.
Reduce menu complexity → simpler supply chain → fewer errors → less founder firefighting.
🏋🏻♀️ Hire operators early
If you keep firefighting, you can’t scale yourself.
Start with the highest-leverage hire. Ask yourself:
Which role, if I stop doing it tomorrow, frees the most time AND prevents the most disasters?
In F&B, it’s usually ops lead, kitchen manager, and procurement lead.
🫡 Design away founder dependency
Document SOPs early.
Cross-train staff to reduce single points of failure.
Think: “If I disappear for 2 weeks, does the business collapse?”
🔗 The Runway Insights
💰 Southeast Asia Funding Radar
Tonik raises $12M (Pre-Series C) to offer more consumer loans and deposits in the Philippines (Link)
Higala raises $4M (Seed) to build payments and core banking infrastructure in the Philippines (Link)
Ultraviolette raises $45M (Series E) to scale in the electric two-wheeler market (Link)
PulseTech closes $3M (Pre-Series A) to upgrade pharma supply chain (Link)
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That’s all for today
Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed today's issue. More than that, I hope you’ve learned some actionable tips to build and grow your business.
You can always write to me by simply replying to this newsletter and we can chat.
See you again next week.
- Admond
Disclaimer: The Runway Ventures content is for informational purposes only. Unless otherwise stated, any opinions expressed above belong solely to the author.
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