In a ghost kitchen, you're cooking in a kitchen optimized for deliveries that's designed to reduce unnecessary costs. The rent is low and the efficiency is high. You have your own private commercial kitchen space inside a delivery center to prepare orders. It can be difficult to expand your traditional restaurant with high overhead costs.
Ghost kitchens are essentially restaurants with no space to eat. Its purpose is to sell and fulfill orders for food online for delivery using third-party applications such as Grubhub, UberEats and DoorDash, or with its own delivery operation. As a result, they usually don't have a visible showcase. In short, ghost kitchens are physical spaces for operators to create food for consumption outside the facility.
And in apps like Grubhub and DoorDash, listings of restaurants that operate with ghost kitchens don't usually look different from physical establishments. For example, where I live in Northern Colorado, there's a restaurant called Rocco's Ravioli that appears on apps. But Rocco's has no shop window. It's a food delivery service that makes food in a ghost kitchen.
Ghost kitchens are also known as microcloud kitchens or virtual kitchens. They refer to restaurants that don't offer food services at home. They're designed to fulfill online orders, so their menus are only available to customers who require delivery. Think of it as a co-working space.
There are no tables or walk-in customers. Just rent a space, create a menu and start selling your food to customers online through third-party delivery apps. With a ghost kitchen, you rent from an owner in facilities such as Kitchens United or Cloud Kitchens, which are usually found in densely populated areas. From there, you include your brand in an application like UberEats or DoorDash and (hopefully) you start getting customers.
Then you ship the orders from the rented kitchen space. Ghost kitchens are one way restaurants can take advantage of the boom in home orders without wasting money on unused dining space (and all the costs involved in maintaining it). Some small food operators used ghost kitchens to gain a foothold in the market at a time when opening a standard restaurant with a dining room would have been unthinkable. According to Greenspan, the possibilities of using ghost kitchens and home delivery as a marketing tool are endless.
Once you have virtual brands that are profitable, a ghost kitchen could be a good way to grow within that neighborhood, especially if you're limited by the capacity of your food trucks. Ghost kitchens are based on the fundamental change in consumer behavior that all restaurants have been experiencing; they reduce the costs associated with restaurants where you can eat at home by capitalizing on the increase in online orders. However, keep in mind that opening a ghost kitchen or virtual restaurant requires a lot of initiative and research on your part. While the high fees charged by major delivery services could be mitigated or included in the price, food delivery teams working in ghost kitchens could find a way to make a living.
If you don't have experience in the food industry, ghost kitchens may seem like a great way to test your food concepts. Ghost kitchens can be used to launch an entirely new business or to expand the delivery range of an existing brand. If you're like Eric Greenspan, Cassia or Canter's, ghost kitchens could be a great way to expand your brand. Yes, we've heard many success stories about restaurants that have implemented the ghost kitchen model.
Even national chains such as Chili's and Applebee's used ghost kitchens to maintain cash flow and try new menu dishes with different brands in case the ideas failed. We recommend trying to understand what other brands are doing or finding a good consultant (such as Greenspan) who has experience with virtual brands and ghost kitchens. If you're able to successfully launch a virtual brand from your own kitchen, then a ghost kitchen could be a good step in expanding your in-store presence. .
.
Leave a Comment