Bay Area-based Curry Up Now announced Thursday it has acquired Tava Kitchen, a fast casual Indian chain, in “a strategic move to expand.”
Curry Up Now operates five stores and four food trucks in California, as well as Mortar & Pestle Bar, a craft cocktail bar attached to the company’s San Jose and San Mateo locations. One of the three Tava Kitchens, the 1,800-square-foot unit in Alameda, is being converted to a Curry Up Now. The rebranding should be complete by June, the company said. The location will also be used as Curry Up Now’s innovation lab to test and launch new items, as well as train new employees.
“We started Curry Up Now in 2009 as a food truck and over the years grew to five food trucks. Meanwhile, we opened our brick-and-mortar restaurants in San Mateo, Palo Alto, San Francisco, San Jose and Oakland,” said CEO Akash Kapoor in a statement. “While Curry Up Now has fast and fine-casual formats, as well as craft cocktail bars attached to our fine casual stores, Tava Kitchen was the first, true Indian quick service brand who figured out how to dish out amazing food in a standardized format. With this acquisition, we are confident that we will be able to combine our vision of Indian food and a fantastic guest experience to grow the Curry Up Now brand worldwide.”
Curry Up Now said it will combine expertise and practices with Tava Kitchen to standardize and simplify food processes.
“It’s been an incredible adventure and joy to build Tava. We started out simply as three friends who wanted to share their love of South Asian food and over the last five years, we’ve helped hundreds of thousands of people find their flavor,” says ,” says Tava Kitchen founder Hasnain Zaidi. “I think it’s incredibly fitting that we’re linking up with our friends at Curry Up Now to help scale that vision across the country. For years people have talked about Indian food being the next big thing. I really think this is the team that’s going to make that happen.”