As COVID-19 shutters many restaurants around the country, one company is exploring opportunities to acquire vacant or closed restaurants and bars with kitchen space.

Cordia recently launched a division called Virtual Dining Brands to consolidate its virtual concepts. The company's virtual restaurants are intended to scale aggressively. The company already has two active online restaurants—Vegas.Pizza and KO Sports Bar and Grill—operating now. It also has a burger restaurant called Supreme Burger that is slated to launch soon.

Peter Klamka, CEO of Cordia, who owns a restaurant and is involved in the nightclub industry in Las Vegas and Los Angeles, actually began building his off-premise business model last year as he noticed more of his food sales coming from delivery. But COVID's restaurant closings have made his business plan even more relevant.

"In my restaurant in Vegas, I have a big commercial kitchen," Klamka says. "Using these delivery apps, I can run ten restaurants out of this out of this location."

Some of those restaurants could be attached to celebrities. Klamka, who says he has worked on licensing agreements with Michael Jordan, Mike Tyson and President Trump, and is planning celebrity-branded delivery restaurants as part of this new division.

"We have a couple of celebrity contracts that we're negotiating," Klamka says. "I'll have five concepts that you can leverage and take out anywhere. The other opportunity is catering. For people who are going back to the office, catering is becoming important. They [employers] don't want the employees going out."

In Vegas, Klamka says he has been able to test which celebrity restaurants are more popular. "You can also test the concept," he says. "This is my laboratory, as delivery becomes the primary way people are starting to get food."

Cordia is also working with a national food distributor to allow for the ordering of necessary ingredients by potential operators around the country. "We can take over a closed Subway and be in business tomorrow, generating revenue through Uber Eats, DoorDash, Postmates, Seamless and all of those apps," Klamka says.

Cordia, which will generate revenue through the sale of ingredients to its licensees in addition to potential royalties, believes that landlords will welcome activating vacant spaces. He is targeting spaces with 1,500 square feet. Along with Subways, Klamka thinks strip center Chinese restaurants and spaces inside of office buildings (which can be catering hubs) are viable targets for Cordia. 

"Our goal is to take over closed spaces," Klamka says. "We won't need improvements.  Parking is more important to us."

The company forecasts a mixture of Cordia owned stores and licensed partners in its planned portfolio.

"I have had inquiries from Cleveland, Ann Arbor, Los Angeles and San Diego," Klamka says. "We're picking our spots in certain markets. Some of them we're going to do, and some of them we will partner with somebody and do it."

Klamka thinks this is the right time to push Cordia, given that the costs to go into the restaurant business are less than usual.

"The real estate and the talent are cheap," Klamka says. "Restaurants are getting evicted, and malls have extra space with places that aren't going to be sit down restaurants anymore. So there is all of this extra kitchen space around."