Tinie Tempah's virtual restaurant brand is selling wraps and fried chicken that are prepared out of a series of ghost kitchens.
Tempah told Insider that he liked the idea of people saying "Oh, Tinie, your raps are delicious."
RAPS features some Nigerian-inspired dishes and was launched on Deliveroo in March. The popup is on a rooftop bar on Oxford Street.
The music industry was put on hold during the Pandemic. Tempah said he wanted to stay busy because he had a lot of spare time.
Tempah jumped at the chance to make a brand together when the co- founder of Kitchen Ventures suggested it.
Virtual brands, which don't have dining rooms and instead make food for delivery and collection only, have boomed in popularity during the Pandemic as more people order takeout. Ghost kitchens have lower rent and overheads than full-service restaurants. Kitchen Ventures has its own kitchens and many of them are home to multiple brands being prepared by the same staff.
Tempah said a lot of his friends were restauranteurs. He already knew the basics of ghost kitchens and had noticed that a lot of the food he ate was made at them.
Tempah was very hands-on in RAPS development, spending around a year visiting restaurants and kitchens, choosing ingredients, and working with chef Big Has.
It was important for me to see what everyone else thought. He said that he would make a track and play it to everyone and get their feedback.
He designed the brand with the music studio staff in mind. Tempah said he ordered a lot of food online while he was working at the studio.
I wanted to get something that was fun, had a nod to Black culture, our hip-hop culture, even a little bit of a nod to African culture, by the way of some of the flavors in the food.
Being Nigerian is a big part of our culture and we are huge foodies, Tempah said.
Growing up, the main instances of success he saw among Nigerian immigrants were people setting up their own businesses. He said these were often restaurants.
McDonald's and Tim Hortons have promotional deals with celebrities, as well as Kitchen Ventures with Tempah, which is a brand of restaurants.
Kitchen Ventures gets a readymade audience overnight with press coverage and social-media posts from collaborating with celebrities. Tempah thinks that the majority of RAPS customers are driven by his endorsement, though he doesn't have a set schedule for posting about the brand on his social media.
The two men shared both profits and intellectual property.
Tempah said that he had always had an entrepreneurial mindset, and that he was inspired by other musicians such as Jay-Z.
He wants to scale RAPS up in the future.
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