ATLANTA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Mar 23, 2026--
Grub Lab, the Australian startup reinventing the traditional kids’ menu into a powerful in-venue engagement platform, today announced it has raised $6 million in new funding from Quantaco to accelerate its U.S. expansion and support a national brand launch featuring partnerships with the National Basketball Association, National Football League, Sony Pictures, and Universal Pictures.
This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260323225291/en/
The funding will scale Grub Lab’s proprietary platform, which enables independent restaurants to offer licensed, interactive kids’ menus tied to major sports leagues and blockbuster franchises complete with QR-enabled augmented reality (AR) experiences, games, and exclusive retail offers.
A Critical Moment for Restaurants in 2026
America’s independent restaurant owners are navigating one of the most complex operating environments in decades:
According to recent industry data from the National Restaurant Association, operators report that traffic growth in 2026 remains uneven, with families in particular seeking venues that offer more than just a meal.
“Parents aren’t just buying chicken tenders anymore,” said Mick Carr, CEO of Grub Lab. “They’re buying 45 minutes of peace, entertainment for their kids, and a reason to come back. Restaurants need tools that help them compete for that experience.”
Reinventing the Kids’ Menu
The traditional black-and-white, photocopied kids’ menu has gone largely unchanged for decades. Grub Lab transforms it into a dynamic brand and engagement platform with:
The result: happier kids, happier parents, longer stays and more reasons to return.
Fresh menu editions are delivered every other month, ensuring restaurants always have something new, surprising, and collectible on their tables.
Through partnerships with national distributors and broker networks, Grub Lab enables restaurants, from regional chains to single-location operators, to access intellectual property typically reserved for global QSR giants.
Designed to Be Effortless for Operators
Grub Lab was built with independent operators in mind.
Restaurants customize their menu once, or as often as they like, through a simple online interface. Grub Lab then handles printing, production, and shipping. New editions arrive approximately every 60 days, ready to go.
No in-house designer.
No marketing team.
No extra work for staff.
“Major leagues and studios have historically partnered with brands like McDonald’s or Burger King,” Carr said. “We built a scalable platform so Betty’s Diner in Alabama or a five-unit concept in Atlanta can offer the same caliber of experience.”
Why This Matters Now
In 2026, consumer behavior is shifting in ways that directly impact restaurant profitability:
Grub Lab’s plug-and-play system addresses each of these pain points without requiring marketing teams, in-house designers, or digital developers.
“Our goal is simple,” said Carr. “Make it effortless for independent restaurants to offer big-brand experiences that drive repeat visits and increase ticket size.”
About Grub Lab
Grub Lab is a restaurant technology platform modernizing the kids’ dining experience through licensed sports and entertainment partnerships, interactive AR-powered digital extensions, and scalable print solutions. Founded in Australia, the company is expanding across the United States with partnerships spanning professional sports leagues and major entertainment studios.
Grub Lab delivers famous brands, fun games, exclusive offers, and fresh collectible menus every other month to help restaurants drive loyalty, repeat visits, and longer family stays without additional operational burden.
Visit www.grublab.co.
Forget the flimsy coloring sheets. Grub Lab delivers kids menus packed with digital games, fun activities and exclusive offers featuring the biggest sports & entertainment brands. Easy to customize. Printed and delivered to your door. Fresh menus arrive every other month.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran warned Monday that it would strike electricity plants across the Middle East and mine the Persian Gulf after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to bomb power stations in the Islamic Republic if it did not reopen the crucial Strait of Hormuz to international shipping.
The war, now in its fourth week, has already seen several dramatic turning points — the killing of Iran’s supreme leader, the bombing of a key Iranian gas field, and strikes targeting oil and gas facilities and other civilian infrastructure in Gulf Arab nations. The conflict has killed more than 2,000 people, shaken the global economy, sent oil prices surging, and endangered some of the world’s busiest air corridors.
Trump’s ultimatum and Iran’s promise of retaliation now threaten to raise the stakes yet again, with potentially catastrophic repercussions for civilians across the region.
If carried out, the attacks could cut electricity to wide swaths of people in Iran and around the Gulf and knock out desalination plants that provide many desert nations with drinking water. There are also increasing concerns about the consequences any of strikes on nuclear facilities.
Even if the attacks are not carried out, the fever pitch of the rhetoric shows how the war has spiraled to a point unimaginable at the start of the conflict on Feb. 28, when the United States and Israel began bombing Iran.
Trump said the U.S. would “obliterate” Iran’s power plants unless the country releases its stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours — a deadline that expires late Monday Washington time.
Iran has shut the strait, through which a fifth of the world’s oil is shipped along with other important commodities, in response to U.S. and Israeli strikes. A trickle of ships has gotten through, and Iran insists the crucial waterway remains open — just not to the U.S., Israel or their allies.
The chokehold has wreaked havoc on energy markets, pushed up the prices on food and other goods well beyond the Middle East and sent shock waves throughout the global economy.
“No country will be immune to the effects of this crisis if it continues to go in this direction,” said Fatih Birol, the head of the Paris-based International Energy Agency.
Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard promised retaliation if Trump made good on his threat, saying Iran it would hit power plants in all areas that supply electricity to American bases, “as well as the economic, industrial and energy infrastructures in which Americans have shares.”
Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf said Iran would consider vital infrastructure across the region to be legitimate targets, including energy and desalination facilities critical for drinking water in Gulf nations.
Iran's semiofficial Fars news agency, which is close to the Revolutionary Guard, published a list of such facilities, including the United Arab Emirates’ nuclear power plant. Over the weekend, Iran launched missiles targeting Dimona in Israel, near a facility key to its long-suspected atomic weapons program. The Israeli facility wasn’t damaged.
United States Central Command chief Adm. Brad Cooper, meanwhile, claimed in an interview that Iran was launching missiles and drones from populated areas, and suggested those areas would be targeted.
“You need to stay inside for right now,” Cooper told Iranian civilians in the interview with the Farsi-language satellite network Iran International that aired early Monday.
In his first one-on-one interview since the war started, Cooper said the U.S. and Israel were targeting infrastructure and manufacturing facilities to destroy Iran’s capabilities to rebuild its military.
“It’s not just about the threat today,” he said. “We’re eliminating the threat of the future.”
Israel launched new attacks Monday on the Iranian capital, saying it had “begun a wide-scale wave of strikes” on infrastructure targets in Tehran without immediately elaborating.
With the U.S. deploying more amphibious assault ships and additional Marines to the Middle East, Iran warned against any ground attack.
“Any attempt by the enemy to target Iran’s coasts or islands will, naturally and in accordance with established military practice, lead to the mining of all access routes ... in the Persian Gulf and along the coasts,” Iran’s Defense Council warned said in a statement.
The widespread use of mines could imperil not only military vessels but scores of commercial ships waiting to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, and a cleanup would last long after the conflict ended.
Trump has said he has no plans to send ground forces into Iran but also has said that he retains all options. Israel has suggested its ground forces could take part in the war.
Iran’s death toll has surpassed 1,500, its Health Ministry has said. In Israel, 15 people have been killed by Iranian strikes. More than a dozen civilians in the occupied West Bank and Gulf Arab states have been killed in strikes.
In Lebanon, authorities say Israeli strikes targeting the Iran-linked Hezbollah militant group have killed more than 1,000 people and displaced more than 1 million. Meanwhile, Hezbollah has fired hundreds of rockets into Israel.
Oil prices remained stubbornly high in early trading, with the price of Brent crude, the international standard, at around $113 a barrel, up some 55% since the war began.
Jorge Moreira da Silva, a senior United Nations official, said the world has already seen a ripple effect, including “exponential price hikes in oil, fuel and gas” that have had a far-reaching impact on millions, primarily in Asian and African developing countries.
“There is no military solution,” he said.
In another sign of the far-reaching effects, South Korean chemical giant LG Chem said Monday it had to shut down a major industrial plant because the war had disrupted supplies of naphtha, a petroleum product used in plastic manufacturing.
Rising reported from Bangkok. AP writers Charlotte Graham-McLay in Wellington, New Zealand, Sally Abou AlJoud in Beirut, and Tong-hyung Kim in Seoul, South Korea, contributed to this report.
Missiles launched from Iran streak across the sky over central Israel, early Monday, March 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
A man waves an Iranian flag during a campaign in support of the government as a woman and vehicles pass by at the Enqelab-e-Eslami, or Islamic Revolution, square in downtown Tehran, Iran, Sunday, March 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
A woman waves an Iranian flag during a campaign in support of the government at the Enqelab-e-Eslami, or Islamic Revolution, square in downtown Tehran, Iran, Sunday, March 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
Smoke and flames rise from an Israeli airstrike that hit the Qasmiyeh Bridge near the coastal city of Tyre, Lebanon, Sunday, March 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Mohammad Zaatari)
A cargo ship carrying vehicles sails through the Arabian Gulf toward the Strait of Hormuz in the United Arab Emirates, Sunday, March 22, 2026. (AP Photo)
People follow a truck carrying the flag draped coffins of Gen. Ali Mohammad Naeini, a spokesperson for Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard and one of his comrades Amir Hossein Bidi , during their funeral procession in Tehran, Iran, Saturday, March 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
