Travis Kalanick had a front-row seat to the food-delivery boom while chief executive at Uber Technologies Inc., thanks to its Uber Eats unit. For his next act, he is trying to capitalize on it through real estate.

With CloudKitchens, he is buying up cheap properties across the U.S. and in India, China, the U.K. and elsewhere. The hope is that their proximity to densely populated areas will make them good candidates for commissary kitchens that can provide food exclusively for delivery, or even miniwarehouses for products...