# One kitchen, many brands

> More of our partners run several restaurant brands out of one kitchen. Here is how the partner app lets one owner switch between them, and how customers can see which brands share a kitchen.

- Source: https://blog.laayo.com.np/one-kitchen-many-brands
- Section: Product
- Author: Laayo Product (Laayo Services Pvt. Ltd.)
- Published: October 2, 2026
- Topics: Restaurants, Partner app, Multi-brand

A familiar story in our towns: a café does well, the owner notices that late-night orders are mostly fried chicken and noodles, and a few months later there is a second name on Laayo, cooked in the same kitchen by the same team. Sometimes it is a cloud kitchen with no dining room at all. Sometimes it is a second restaurant across the road.

From a business point of view, these are separate restaurants. Each brand has its own menu, its own ratings and its own money. From the owner's point of view, it is one phone, one kitchen and one very busy evening. Our partner app used to only understand the first view.

## Separate on purpose

There were two ways to model this. One is a single owner account that holds several stores. The other is several owner accounts, one per brand, linked together.

We chose the second. Each brand keeps its **own wallet and its own payouts**, which is what most owners want. One brand might be a partnership with a friend, or simply have its own bank account. Mixing money between brands is a mistake that is easy to make and painful to unpick, so we built the system so it cannot happen by accident.

Linking is done by our team, not by the partner. When an owner asks, someone at Laayo checks that the accounts really belong to the same person and links them. Unlinking is just as easy.

![Two brands keep their own menus, ratings and payouts. Linked accounts let the owner switch in the partner app and let customers see sister brands from the same kitchen.](https://blog.laayo.com.np/media/seed/multi-brand.svg)

## Switching in the partner app

In the partner app, the top bar shows the name of the restaurant you are looking at. If your account is linked to others, a small arrow appears next to the name. Tap it and you see all your brands, each with an open or closed dot. Tap one and the app switches to it in a moment, without logging out.

Getting this right took more care than the button suggests:

- **Both brands keep ringing the same phone.** An owner switching to brand B still needs to hear brand A's new orders. Switching moves the phone's notifications to the new brand without removing the old one.
- **Notifications say which brand.** When an owner has several brands, each new-order alert starts with the brand name, in the form "Brand name: You've got a new order", and tapping it opens the app on the right brand, switching for you if needed.
- **Old orders do not leak across.** An early version kept the previous brand's running orders in memory after a switch, and the app kept trying to refresh orders that no longer belonged to the account it was showing. Switching now clears that state cleanly.

We are bringing the same to staff accounts, so a kitchen manager who handles two brands can switch between them just like the owner, with each brand's permissions kept separate.

## What customers see

Customers sometimes want to know that two restaurants share a kitchen. Maybe they love the momo from one brand and want to know where else that cook's food shows up. Maybe they just want to understand why two places look so similar.

On a restaurant's page, we are rolling out a row that reads **"This is a multi-brand kitchen"** when the restaurant is linked to other brands. Tapping it shows the sister brands, open ones first, with the same restaurant card used everywhere else in the app.

We made a few choices about what counts as a sister brand:

- **Different names only.** Two branches of the same restaurant are outlets, not brands, so they are not listed here.
- **Same kind of store.** A restaurant's sister brands are restaurants, not grocery shops the same owner happens to run.
- **Live brands only.** A brand that is switched off or paused does not appear.

## Why we bothered

Running several brands is one of the ways a good kitchen grows without a second building. We want Laayo to make that easier, not harder. One phone, clean money, and customers who can find your other food.

## What's next

We are looking at a combined view for owners: today's orders across all their brands on one screen, while payouts stay separate. If you run more than one brand on Laayo and want your accounts linked, message us from the partner app and we will set it up.