A ghost kitchen is a professional food preparation and
cooking facility put up for the sole purpose of preparing food for delivery via
mail. Some Ghost kitchens offer take-out options or have driven-through
windows. Customers will not have access to a storefront or inside seating. A
ghost kitchen is not the same as a virtual restaurant in that it is not a
restaurant brand and may have a kitchen
There is enough kitchen space and facilities for
multiple restaurant brands. Ghost kitchens can be used as part of a physical
restaurant or as a stand-alone facility.
In a 2015 NBC New York report, the phrase "Ghost
Kitchen" was first used. The story was critical of New York City's ghost
restaurants when restaurant owners were discovered by an investigating team
listing their establishment under the name "Ghost Kitchen." several
distinct brands on delivery services such as Seamless and GrubHub.
The names and addresses of these kitchens did not
match any of the listings in the city's database of restaurant inspection
grades. Several of these enterprises were non-retail food manufacturing
facilities that lacked restaurant licenses to serve meals to clients directly.
As a result, the fake brands were removed from
seamless and GrubHub, and each business enacted policy requiring restaurants to
fact-check material and provide transparency to clients using delivery apps.
In response to the fast rise in customer demand for
restaurant delivery meals, the growing use of third-party delivery apps, and
the reduced costs paid by employing cooking facilities located outside of
high-rent, high-foot-trafficked metropolitan areas, ghost kitchens have
developed as a business model.
Using a ghost kitchen helps established restaurants
with dining-in service to grow their delivery operations without putting
additional strain on the current kitchen. It also frees up parking for delivery
trucks, allowing the restaurant to expand into other regions at a reduced cost.
For the foodservice sector, ghost kitchens have been critical since they allow
restaurants to operate at reduced rates and retain payroll.
How Ghost Kitchen Function?
As we know till now that ghost kitchens do not involve
a sitting area which saves a lot of budget and space cutting out all the staff
services too. The ghost kitchen shouldn’t be confused with a home cook who is
delivering food after cooking it in their kitchen and does not involve the
delivery of pre-packaged foods.
The cloud kitchen also operates at the same level as a
restaurant does except that they depend heavily on social media presence for
their orders. These kitchens operate out of a space which is a complete kitchen
with all the pieces of equipment along with ration. The place is mostly rented
but sometimes, it operates out of a van too.
Like every other restaurant, they also have a unique
menu from which the customer can place an order. Due to the absence of a big
brand association, they can experiment with their menus and the number of
things they want to serve to the population.
Since everything is done on a digital platform in a
cloud kitchen, it is a lot easier to track the ratings and feedback from the customers.
These ratings further help the kitchen to grow and noticed by the people. A
person can start her cloud kitchen in less than 8 weeks with their brand.
Growth in the COVID-era
After the Covid entered and lockdowns imposed all over
the world. It severely impacted a lot of business and niche around the world.
Several small business owners and eateries went out of the business. However,
some restaurants either started their cloud kitchen or started serving for
other major brands to cut the lay-offs and support their staff.
This accelerated the growth of this industry by five
years in just three months of 2020 due to an economic friendly plan. The
expected growth of this industry is predicted to be $1 trillion by 2030.
Various types of Ghost Kitchens
1. Independent Ghost Kitchen Business Model
2. Multi-Brand Ghost Kitchen Business Model
3. Operator Managed Ghost Kitchen Business Model
4. Mid Ground Ghost Kitchen Business Model
5. Brand Owned Ghost Kitchen Business Model
Advantages of Ghost Kitchen
1. Flexibility- As everything is based digitally, one
can change the concept of the restaurant anytime without having to incur any
extra cost of renovating the whole place.
2. Crafted Menu – One can change their menu at any
point at any time, based on the produce, season, customer liking, trend or just
for experimenting purpose.
3. Low Investment- it requires a low amount of
investment as all the major costs of dining, décor, serving staff is
eliminated.
4. High Growth- This is a growing industry as it
doesn’t matter whether a virus has taken over the whole world or people cannot
gather anymore, but, fast food will be eaten by people as it has become like an
escape from home-cooked food.
Disadvantages of Ghost Kitchen
The disadvantage of setting up a ghost kitchen is related
to the delivery of the food, since everything is being fixed and done online,
the owners have to either set up a delivery service house which becomes a very
costly affair or they use a third-party delivery app.
Using a third-party delivery app comes with its limitation
of taking a high percentage from your order as well as your customer base which
implies that the customers are not of yours rather of a delivery app that can
be lost in a jiffy.
Here are some ghost kitchen examples in India
1. Meat Stock Exchange
2. Firangi Bake
3. Sweet Truth
4. Burger in My Box
5. Karate Kitchen
Written By - Chavi Goel
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