Travis Kalanick flies to Milwaukee the week of a major ghost-kitchen industry conference

Travis Kalanick flew from Van Nuys to Milwaukee on May 11 in his Gulfstream G650ER, tail N10100, a three-hour hop that put him within driving distance of Chicago. The same week, the National Restaurant Association Show — the food-service industry's largest annual gathering — opens at McCormick Place, drawing ghost-kitchen operators, robotics vendors, and the investors who fund them. Kalanick's CloudKitchens, now rebranded as Atoms, operates 400-plus locations globally and has been pivoting toward industrial robotics, a focus he discussed on the TBPN podcast in March, per [foxbusiness.com](https://www.foxbusiness.com/real-estate/billionaire-uber-co-founder-travis-kalanick-admits-strategically-moving-texas-before-california-wealth-tax).

The trip follows a pattern: Kalanick flew New York to Los Angeles on May 8, then Los Angeles to New York on May 6, suggesting a week of back-to-back meetings before landing in the Midwest. His December 2025 relocation to Austin, confirmed by [statesman.com](http://austin.blog.statesman.com/business/article/uber-founder-austin-tech-move-robots-22079819.php), was timed to dodge California's proposed billionaire wealth tax, which would have cost him an estimated $180 million. Milwaukee's Mitchell International is a common alternative to Chicago O'Hare for private aircraft, offering quicker turnaround and proximity to the same investor circuit.

Atoms' push into "gainfully employed robots" for food, mining, and transport — as Kalanick described it on the podcast — makes the National Restaurant Association Show a natural stop. The conference runs through May 14, and Kalanick's aircraft remained on the ground in Milwaukee as of this writing.