Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick has been developing a radical vision for food that goes well beyond his initial fascination with ghost kitchens. He wants to turn the way individuals eat and get food on its head, making it as low-cost and convenient as possible. Kalanick’s vision is to create an “internet food court,” where customers can order a huge variety of meals with rapid delivery, just as they would browse and purchase online.

Central to this vision is ghost kitchening, which forms the basis of reducing labor expenditure and enhancing efficiency through automation. Kalanick’s company, Lab37, designed robots like the “bowl builder,” which can prepare over 100 bowls per hour with little to no human contact. The automation is not limited to food production but also into logistics, as the use of delivery robots and drones is meant to reduce the cost of deliveries.

Kalanick also aims to upend the grocery business by charging delivered meals in the same range as grocery buying. He believes that through efficiency streamlined and reduced costs, customers will pay for the convenience of having their meals prepared and delivered to them. The approach may double value customers receive from food shopping.

Kalanick recently launched a service called Picnic, which offers no-fee, bulk food delivery to offices and apartments. This aligns with his broader goal of making food delivery less expensive and more convenient. Picnic allows customers to order from over 100 restaurants with no delivery fee or gratuity, bringing meals directly to offices.

Kalanick’s lobbying also involves requesting regulatory changes that would require food delivery apps to provide consumer data to restaurants. The move is seen as being in the interest of his own food businesses, such as CloudKitchens, which has a chain of ghost kitchens. CloudKitchens’ parent company, City Storage Systems, also owns Otter, a software platform that helps restaurants manage orders from multiple delivery platforms.

It had faced challenges in the form of staff cuts, as well as restaurant closures within some markets despite that. It remains a leader in the market for food delivery. It now expanded to 30 countries and is looking into going public for further funding so it can press on with aggressive plans. Its founder’s, Kalanick’s, view of the food delivery future involves not only growing ghost kitchens but an end-to-end ecosystem comprising automation, logistics, and individualized customer experience.

The long-term vision is to be able to have food delivery so effective that it will actually be a viable substitute for the trip to the grocery store, leveraging technology to reduce prices and enhance convenience. Given his long track record of disrupting mature industries, Kalanick is positioned to disrupt the food industry as well, potentially revolutionizing the way people eat and interact with food services.