What is the deal with ghost kitchens?

In a ghost kitchen, you are cooking in a kitchen with optimized delivery and 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.

In short, ghost kitchens are physical spaces for operators to create food for consumption outside the facility. And in apps such as Grubhub and DoorDash, listings of restaurants that operate with ghost kitchens don't usually look different from traditional 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 do not offer food services on site. They are 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. Partnership with food delivery services is beneficial to ghost kitchens.

Instead of taking care of customers who come to the facilities, Ghost Kitchens employees get used to working with delivery employees, so both parties become efficient in expediting deliveries. It's also easier to place orders correctly, since customers can use third-party apps to place orders online and have enough time to review orders before placing them. Foodies who enjoy different types of cuisine but prefer a restaurant to cook, ghost kitchens are a welcome addition to the restaurant business. While the high fees charged by major delivery services could be mitigated or included in the price, food delivery companies that work in ghost kitchens could find a way to make a living.

For Delia Simone, founder and executive chef of the high-end Los Angeles bakery Art Delectables, partnering with a ghost kitchen company has worked on a smaller scale. The restaurant may allow the ghost kitchen to sell and ship desserts to customers, generating more business. Ghost kitchens that serve several brands are expensive, he says, and to make a profit, business must be booming. The quality and convenience of ghost kitchens will make them a common option for consumers who want to enjoy high-quality restaurant dishes and special meals without leaving their homes.

For some independent restaurateurs, such as Mota, the ghost kitchen is only a temporary solution to survive until the dining rooms can fully reopen. With customers adapting to the trend quickly and easily, ghost kitchens are likely here to stay. The dynamics of running a restaurant are changing and ghost kitchens are helping to reach an untapped market audience. The beauty of ghost kitchens is that you are in control of most operational aspects, in addition to delivery.

The concept of a ghost kitchen is new to many people, but as these food service operations increase in popularity, greater demand is expected from consumers, who have become accustomed to home food delivery, telehealth visits and working from home. One trend that I am seeing is the formation of central ghost kitchens, economato type, with several restaurants or brands that work in the same physical space. Ghost kitchens are food preparation operations without waiters, dining room or parking; in reality, without any public presence. Even national chains such as Chili's and Applebee's used ghost kitchens to maintain cash flow and try new menu dishes under different brands in case the ideas failed.

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. .