Ghost kitchens are popping up around the world, a last-ditch effort by restaurants to stay afloat and serve customers while the coronavirus shuts businesses down. In cities that increasingly look like ghost towns, the all-delivery and take-out-service-only paradigm is gaining an almost natural foothold as the public has been commanded to remain ‘socially distant’ and take extreme measures to avoid close contact with other people.
As part of government efforts to curb the spread of the potentially lethal and highly contagious COVID-19, ghost kitchens have been given the green light by health authorities to safely provide food without the traditional storefront. As far as resources go, the National Restaurant Association has devoted much of their website to corona-related guidelines and instructions on how restaurants can continue to operate safely.
About Ghost Restaurants
Ghost restaurants are foodservice businesses that serve customers exclusively through telephone orders, online orders, and cloud-based mobile ordering. Also known as cloud kitchens and virtual restaurants, the concept is not a at all new. In fact, before corona, NDP Group food experts cited the paradigm as the fastest-growing source of restaurant sales in the United States. It originally emerged as a way for food-and-beverage companies to capitalize on the rising popularity of take-out versus in-house dining and as a way for startups to break into the saturated market. Furthermore, partnering with third-party delivery companies such as UberEats, Doordash, and Grubhub saved many flaying businesses, allowing them to answer the public’s demand for speed and convenience while benefitting from the inherent advantages of operating a ghost kitchen. These same life-saving properties have come to the fore even more during the corona crisis.
The Benefits of Ghost Restaurants
In a mode where customer interaction is strictly virtual, some of the benefits of transitioning from traditional brick-and-mortar dining-rooms to remote kitchens include:
- Reduced Investment and Overhead: No need for an actual storefront, dining area, furniture, or fancy decor
- Fewer Employees/Staff: Enjoy major labor reduction costs for waiters, dishwashers, hosts/hostesses, large kitchen staff, HR personnel, and team training/management
- Less Equipment Required: A few pots, pans, baking dishes, fridge/freezer, stovetop and/or oven, and food packaging are all the hardware you need to operate – along with some of your customers’ favorite recipes!
- Easy to Set Up Anywhere, Anytime: Another virtue of ghost kitchens is their degree of flexibility, including their massive mobility. For example, you can continue to use your current restaurant’s kitchen as a base – assuming that the space is still open and financially viable. Alternatively, you can operate your renovated ghost business from your home kitchen, a food truck, or any other available locale that allows you to prepare food. Many restaurant owners who on the verge of extinction due to coronavirus shutdowns have turned to sharing kitchen spaces with other foodservice pros and/or temporarily renting out commercial kitchens
- Adjustable Menus: Since your business for the foreseeable future will be app-based or web-based, enjoy the versatility of being able to change your virtual menu daily, or at will, and in accordance with supply and demand
- Option of Partnering with Food Delivery Services: If you have never dabbled in food delivery before, you don’t have to go it alone. The growing availability of third-party delivery companies gives you the option of focusing on your expertise – food prep – while someone else picks up your customers’ food and delivers it
How it Works
If this is your first attempt at running a ghost restaurant, here in a nutshell is the process involved:
- Using their mobile device, laptop, desktop computer, or telephone, customers contact your virtual restaurant
- With access to your online menu at their fingertips, customers place their order
- Customers pay remotely for their online orders
- Your staff prepares their food order
- When the food is ready, it is transported door-to-door or to another preset location (i.e. curbside pickup) by your driver or a food-delivery service
Delivery Now a Permanent Part of the Foodservice Landscape
If there is one outstanding change that will forever define how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the restaurant business – and likely the biggest challenge you will face as a foodservice owner who has no option but to adapt – it is this: While once considered a luxury and a market of convenience for customers – as well as a method of operation whose path to profitability was questionable – food delivery is here to stay. This, says the group of industry experts who recently met to discuss the current state of affairs in the latest On The Agenda Digital Roundtable discussion of “How We Eat” with Karen Webster.
According to Paytronix CEO Andrew Robbins, in a matter of mere days, the unprecedented times essentially ground the restaurant and catering industries to a halt, forcing owners to turn on a dime and figure out curbside pickup and delivery, how to turn their kitchens into ghost establishments, and how to navigate their way through a crisis which itself is unstable and changes every day.
Robbins, whose firm provides technology services to 30,000 restaurants nationwide, adds that adaptation is the only option open for eateries today and that as delivery grows, owners will have to decide whether to build their own delivery options or whether they want to work with third-party aggregators such as GrubHub and UberEats. He concludes by surmising that this shift in operations will likely continue long after the pandemic has passed.
Ghost Restaurant Tips
Best advice from the experts? First, be sure you have the proper licenses that allow you to continue legally selling food to consumers. After that, the recipe to success is: Keep it simple! While you can always add to and enhance your menu with pioneering recipes down the road, what customers are seeking today are basic meals and side dishes. Choose items that your staff can consistently and reliably prepare in the volume required. Streamline your operation in every way possible, even if it means providing preconfigured meals or meal kits as opposed to an open menu. Keep your costs low by sticking to standard ingredients and recipes prepared easily. In addition, choose foods that travel well and maintain their temperature. You will need to get some quick 411 on food packaging, preservation, and transport to prevent orders from spilling on route, arriving cold and soggy, or overdone and dried out. Finally, on account of corona, be sure to adhere to contactless service and delivery to the best of your ability and always adhere to the latest official “do’s and don’ts” government guidelines.
Marketing Your Ghost Restaurant During Corona
Fortunately, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel or win a MasterChef’s competition to launch and promote your new eatery. In fact, in the current global reality, the coronavirus is already providing your virtual restaurant most of the advertising it needs to market your operations. Having said that, in general, virtual restaurants use the same marketing tactics that work for traditional restaurants, including social media exposure, an up-to-date user-friendly website, and search engine optimization (SEO).
Some More Food for Thought
The current crisis has placed your business in a unique limelight, offering you the opportunity to not only provide basic nourishment but to be a pillar of your community in a time of need. To support the masses suffering from unemployment, isolation, and ill-health, many foodservice professionals are stepping up to the plate by offering special promotions, discounts, and other acts of culinary and community generosity.
On a large scale, for instance, celebrity chef Guy Fieri has partnered with the National Restaurant Association’s Educational Foundation and its Restaurant Employee Relief Fund (RERF), offering grants to out-of-work restaurant workers amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Under the program, food service workers can apply for grants of $500 each to put towards housing, groceries, medical costs or other living expenses while out of work.
If you have the will and the means to become a frontrunner in this area on your own level and on any scale, the good reputation your business will earn will surely bear rich rewards in customer loyalty and enhanced brand image far into the future.
Good News for Restaurateurs Despite Corona
Let’s conclude with some great news amidst the turbulent chaos caused by the coronavirus: First, many eateries are reporting that their newly repackaged food-to-go business paradigms are picking up steam, providing a win-win for all involved. Second, according to customer surveys, the very presence of operational food businesses inspires hope, hence your ‘ghost’ kitchen may ironically be playing a significant role in helping restore a sense of vitality and normalcy in these highly abnormal times.