Ghost kitchen

A ghost kitchen is a professional food preparation and cooking facility set up for the preparation of delivery-only meals.[1][2] A ghost kitchen contains the kitchen equipment and facilities needed for the preparation of restaurant meals but has no dining area for walk-in customers.[3] Restaurants that use ghost kitchens may have a different physical location for walk-in customers, or may be a delivery-only ghost restaurant.[4]

A ghost kitchen differs from a ghost restaurant in that a ghost kitchen is not necessarily a restaurant brand in itself and may contain kitchen space and facilities for more than one restaurant brand.[5]

Terminology

A ghost kitchen may also be known as a delivery kitchen, virtual kitchen, shadow kitchen, commissary kitchen, dark kitchen, or cloud kitchen.[6]

Background

Ghost kitchens have emerged as a business model in response to the rapid growth in consumer demand for restaurant delivery meals,[3] and the lower costs incurred by using kitchen facilities located outside of high-rent, high-foot-trafficked urban locations.[7][8] In addition to equipped kitchen space, ghost kitchen operators can offer point of sale and ordering software that accommodates various delivery platforms (GrubHub, UberEats, DoorDash, e.g.) and dedicated parking areas for delivery drivers.[5] Using a ghost kitchen allows established restaurants with dining-in service to expand their delivery operations without adding stress to the existing kitchen, frees up parking taken by the delivery vehicles, and allows them to enter new neighborhoods at lower cost.[9]

Companies

Numerous ghost kitchens operate across the world, with new kitchens opening up frequently as of 2020. The following are some examples of these delivery-only facilities:

  • Sweetheart Kitchen - is a private label Multi-Brand Virtual Kitchen founded by Peter Schatzberg in Dubai in April 2019. Its first kitchen was launched in September 2019 in Al Barsha, Dubai, and since then has multiple units across Dubai and Kuwait. It also has leases for space in Saudi Arabia, but has not yet opened up for business in the country. By end of 2021, the company plans on having over 100 kitchens across the Middle East.[10][11]
  • Bamboo Asia Oakland - is a San Francisco Bay Area fast-casual chain that opened a 10,000-square-foot cloud kitchen in Oakland in January 2018.
  • Bon Appetite, Delivered - brings together the food and lifestyle magazine, Bon Appetit, the Chicago-based restaurant group Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises (LEYE) and Grubhub, in which Bon Appetit uses LEYE kitchen space and kitchen staff to create Bon Appetit recipes for delivery by Grubhub.[12][13]
  • CloudKitchens - offers "smart kitchens for delivery-only restaurants."[14] Former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, through his investment fund, 10100, invested $200 million to acquire a majority stake in City Storage Systems, a real estate investment company with an interest in redeveloping urban spaces for new uses, including ghost kitchens,[15] operating under the name of CloudKitchens.[16] The other major investor is Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund which invested $400 million.[17]
  • Commissary Connect - is a network of commissaries and shared-use production facilities in Vancouver, Canada, in operation since 2013. Commissary Connect leases space to multiple food businesses and entrepreneurs to support food delivery and other methodologies for selling local food. In addition to facilities, Commissary Connect has developed proprietary technology that co-ordinates facility management and provides services for renters.
  • Deliveroo Editions - the ghost kitchen arm of the London-based food-delivery app, Deliveroo, announced plans in 2017 to set up 30 kitchens in London and Brighton.[18] In May 2018, Deliveroo announced a £5 million innovation fund to explore new ventures, including developing new restaurant concepts to be operated out of Editions kitchens. The restaurant concepts and their locations will be determined through analysis of Deliveroo's meal delivery data.[19] As part of its expansion into ghost kitchens, Deliveroo Editions has equipped mobile, shipping container-sized kitchens it locates in British cities that lack variety in food delivery choices.[20]
  • Faasos - subsidaiary of Rebel Foods, based in Mumbai, India, began as a restaurant food delivery company, but expanded into cloud kitchens.[21] The company operates over 300 cloud kitchens across 35 Indian cities and says it processes over 2 million orders per month as of April 2020.[22] In September 2019, the company announced a new round of investment from Goldman Sachs and other partners totaling $2 billion rupees ($28 million). Earlier funders include Sequoia Capital, Lightbox Venture Capital and Sistema Asia Fund.[23] The company claims over 200 cloud kitchen locations in India.
  • Karma Kitchen - is a U.K.-based company that rents out kitchen space to different food providers at different times of day.[24]
  • Keatz - began setting up ghost kitchens in Berlin, Germany and has expanded to 10 sites in Amsterdam, Madrid, Barcelona, and Munich. It has attracted funding from US and European investors totaling €19 million, including €7 million in March 2019 by RTP Global.[25]
  • Kitchen United - Google Ventures has invested $10 million in the Pasadena-based company.[26] In addition to providing services for restaurants wishing to expand their delivery operations, they rent space by the hour to chef-entrepreneurs wishing to experiment with new concepts.[5] The company has ghost kitchens in eight US cities, including Pasadena, Scottsdale, Atlanta, Chicago and Columbus, OH with plans to have 15 kitchen centers opened by 2020.[27]
  • Kitopi - the Dubai-based company, launched in January 2018, has raised $89 million in funding from venture capital investors including from the corporate venture arm of Crescent Enterprises[28] and has now cloud kitchens in UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, US and UK.[29][30]
  • Star Kitchens - is a variation of the ghost kitchen set-up, created through a partnership between Starbucks and Freshippo/Hema, the Chinese supermarket chain owned by Alibaba.[31] Under the agreement announced in 2018, Starbucks will convert sections of Hema grocery stores' kitchen facilities into virtual Starbucks kitchens, dedicated to selling coffee and baked goods which will be delivered by Alibaba’s food-delivery unit, Ele.me.[32]
  • Swiggy Access - the cloud kitchen arm of Swiggy India's largest food delivery startups, has established 1,000 cloud kitchens across 14 cities in the country for its restaurant partners.[33]
  • Uber Eats - ride service Uber's food delivery service and app opened its first ghost kitchen in Paris in 2019[34] and has since added more, though none in the US.
  • Zuul Kitchens - offers space to multiple restaurants as a home base exclusively for deliveries.[35] It opened a location in New York City’s SoHo neighborhood in 2019 with nine separate kitchen units.[36][37]

References
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  3. Madhumita, Murgia (5 April 2017). "Deliveroo expands with standalone takeaway kitchens". Financial Times. Retrieved 19 June 2019.
  4. Bromwich, Jonah Engel (2019-12-24). "Farm to Table? More Like Ghost Kitchen to Sofa". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2019-12-27.
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  15. Diduch, Mary (February 17, 2019). "Travis Kalanick sets sights on Europe, Asia with new venture". TheRealDeal.com. Korangy Publishing Inc. Retrieved 2 July 2019. Former Uber CEO's new company is quietly building an empire of food delivery kitchens
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