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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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Winter Is Coming for Outdoor Dining, So Get Going With Off-Premises

In further proof that you can’t solve the current restaurant industry crisis by flipping a switch, Upserve released new data this week that shows many restaurants are still struggling with off-premises formats.

Upserve’s survey polled 421 players across different types of restaurants, including full-service/dine-in, fast casual, QSRs, and fine dining, among others. The big takeaway? More than half (64 percent) of restaurants feel “optimistic” about the future, but nearly half (47 percent) struggle with shifting their business models to online ordering and the formats that come with it.

We’ve seen this play out in real time for better and for worse throughout the last several months. Restaurants historically focused on dine-in service have had to pivot to delivery and curbside pickup, not to mention find affordable tech solutions that could enable online ordering. Businesses have struggled to master off-premises operations. They’ve gotten really creative with ad hoc tech stacks and worked much harder to communicate with their customers. And most all of them have seen a rise in off-premises orders. Upserve’s report said that as of July, its restaurant customers “have seen a 782.7% increase in Online Order sales volume growth.”

But Upserve also points out that autumn is practically upon us, and once colder weather comes, the option for outdoor seating will go away, not just for its own customers but for everyone. “It’s key that restaurants find an online ordering solution that works for their customers by the fall,” the report said.

The call to action for all restaurants right now is to get their off-premises strategies fine-tuned, streamlined, and operationally efficient, regardless of the trajectory of the pandemic or the future of indoor dining. Even if indoor dining returns in some form close to what we used to know, its chances of unseating off-premises at this point are slim to none.

Here’s Why Delivery Price Hikes By QSRs Could Spike Demand for Drive Thru

Admittedly, I brushed over news from earlier this week that some QSRs are raising their delivery prices more than 15 percent. But the more I’ve thought about it over the last few days, the more I wonder at two things: the chains’ motivations behind the price hikes and whether they’ll prompt more customers to order drive-thru and pickup to save a few bucks. 

Business Insider first wrote about the price hikes, noting that Chick-fil-A’s prices are 30 percent higher for delivery, while Starbucks and McDonald’s prices are about 20 percent higher. My own unscientific analysis compared the costs of McDonald’s double quarter pounder with cheese meal and found it to be $9.19 on Uber Eats versus $7.99 via McDonald’s own app. (Both prices are before taxes, delivery fees, and tip.)

That example is arguably not going to break the bank. But consider that since more people are staying home and ordering for the whole household, delivery orders are likely much bigger than a single meal, which could significantly raise the cost of dinner. 

Of course, part of the reason for these price hikes is that large chains, just like small restaurants, have to pay the third-party delivery piper when it comes to commission fees, which can go as high as 30 percent. Passing some of that burden on to the customer makes sense from a business perspective.

Question is, will customers want to shoulder that delivery burden when they could hop in the car, drive a couple miles, and collect their food via curbside pickup for cheaper? In many cases, probably not. For one thing, a lot of food from QSRs just doesn’t travel well and you typically wind up with soggy fries, watery soda, and lukewarm burgers. For another, we’re in economically uncertain times, y’all. 

Given all that, more customers will be motivated to order their fast food via pickup and drive thru, which may be part of these chains’ longer-term strategies in terms of price hikes. Restaurants make more money off pickup orders (no commission fees), and when orders are funneled through the business’s own digital properties, the customer data remains in-house. Over the last year we’ve seen an uptick in brands encouraging customers to order via in-house apps, while others are even launching their own full-stack delivery services. 

Price hike’s won’t take third-party delivery down, but if customers respond by choosing pickup, curbside, and drive-thru, the loss of business will be another swing of the hammer currently trying to crumble third-party delivery’s chances of profitability. 

Elsewhere in Restaurant Tech . . .

  • Iconic hot dog chain Nathan’s Famous has partnered with REEF to use the latter’s ghost kitchen network to fulfill more off-premises orders. The partnership is now in Manhattan, and Nathan’s has cities like LA, Portland, and Minneapolis on the horizon. 
  • Yum Brands’ digital sales hit an all time high of $3.5 billion in Q2 of 2020. The parent company of Taco Bell, KFC, and Pizza Hut notably said on the call that opening dining rooms was important but not “critical” to the company’s success. 
  • Sonic unveiled a new drive-thru design that’s further proof the drive-thru experience is also being reinvented. Contactless order and payment capabilities, expanded patio areas, and “lawn games” (?!) are all part of the new design.
  • Oakland this week became the latest city to approve a cap on commission fees third-party delivery services charge restaurants. The 15-percent cap is effective immediately and last until 90 days after the COVID-19 health emergency is over. Whenever that is. 

Chick-fil-A Goes Cashless in Some States, Raises Questions About the Model

Chick-fil-A restaurants in Florida, Indiana, Georgia, Virginia, and Maryland have pivoted to a cashless business model, according to Restaurant Dive. The switch is an effort to stop the spread of coronavirus as Chick-fil-A continues to operate takeout, delivery, and drive-thru and dining rooms remain shuttered.

The move also reignites the debate around cashless business models. On the one hand, an all-digital payment model makes for more precise accounting and safer places to work (you can’t rob a handheld scanner like you can a til.) The other side of the argument is that cashless models discriminate against the millions of underbanked and unbanked individuals who may not have a checking account and need to use cash for their transactions. Some places have outright banned the model, among them NYC, Philadelphia, and the entire state of New Jersey.

That was pre-pandemic, though. In recent weeks, other restaurants besides Chick-fil-A have also moved to cashless models in response to COVID-19, including the Castellucci Hospitality Group, which operates several restaurants in the Atlanta, GA area, and the Tender Greens chain.

Prior to the pandemic, the argument over cashless business seemed fairly cut and dry: the benefits of the model (speed, convenience) didn’t outweigh the downsides (classism).

But no one needs a crystal ball to understand that this global health crisis we’re in will permanently change many of our shopping and eating habits away from the house. Even when restaurant dining rooms open again, it’s likely that tables will be spaced much farther apart, cleaning and sanitizing standards will be twice as rigorous (and they were already pretty rigorous), and large restaurant chains will implement other ways of convincing customers they can order safely. Contactless delivery is already here to stay. It’s not difficult to imagine cashless payments will also stick around in some states — though perhaps not without great debate.

Of course, swiping a debit card or paying with a mobile phone won’t ensure a completely germ-free experience, which is why we may see a lot more chains pushing harder for customers to use their mobile apps. On Chick-fil-A’s website, for example, customers are “encouraged to utilize mobile ordering and mobile payment through the Chick-fil-A app.” We may also see brands start to funnel more money into more robust mobile platforms that reward customers for ordering and paying through the app, much like Starbucks does.

None of that solves the fundamental problem with cashless payments, and not even a global pandemic will magically make it possible for millions of people to get bank accounts. Even so, the current situation we’re in may shift the weight of this particular debate in the coming months, for better and for worse. 

Applebee’s Is Planning Ghost Kitchens for Delivery and Takeout Orders

Applebee’s just became the latest restaurant chain to hop the ghost kitchen bandwagon. In an interview with Nation’s Restaurant News, Steve Joyce, CEO of Applebee’s parent Dine Brands, said the company was “experimenting” with the concept.

To be honest, the development isn’t terribly surprising. At the end of 2019, we predicted that ghost kitchens would become “the norm” for larger restaurant chains, since they not only to help them fulfill more delivery orders but also to let them reach areas of the country where they might not have a brick-and-mortar presence. Chick-fil-A is a good example. The company has expanded its presence in Northern California — where it has few brick-and-mortar stores — by renting space in DoorDash’s Redwood City ghost kitchen facility. Doing so lets the chain reach a potentially wider audience without having to invest the time and money into building out full Chick-fil-A locations.

Dine Brands’ Joyce suggested his company is looking into a similar strategy for Applebee’s, telling NRN that he’s hoping to use ghost kitchens to increase Applebee’s presence in “underserved cities,” particularly those in the Midwest. He also said the company was looking into different kinds of ghost kitchens: operating its own as well as partnering with third-party kitchen providers. 

My crystal ball tells me Applebee’s probably will team up with DoorDash to realize at least some of its ghost kitchen ambitions. The chain already has a national delivery partnership with the service. Renting out space in DoorDash’s ghost kitchen facility could greatly expand Applebee’s presence in the California Peninsula area, where currently it only has a few locations.

As for the rest of the country, Applebee’s would have to partner with another provider. Kitchen United has open locations in Chicago, Southern California, and Phoenix, and has more facilities in the works. Zuul Kitchens is currently focused on the NYC area, as is Kitopi. 

Whether restaurants should be betting their entire off-premises strategies on VC-backed ghost kitchen facilities is a debate for another day (stay tuned). For its part, Applebee’s has said it is looking into a combination of ghost kitchen types, which means it isn’t going to rely solely on third-party providers. Glancing a moment into the longer-term future, that’s probably the smartest bet right now for big restaurant chains.

A Snapshot of the 6 Biggest Fast Food Companies’ Sustainability Pledges

Environmental issues are no longer an invisible threat. With temperatures warming, oceans are heating up and extreme weather events such as hurricanes and forest fires, as we’re currently seeing in Australia, are happening more frequently.

There’s only so much individuals can do to lessen our impact on the warming planet, including flying and driving less and cutting back on meat. It’s on governments and businesses, especially corporations, to stave off catastrophe.

As we start off a new decade, let’s take a look at the sustainability pledges of the top fast food companies by revenues. As emissions that result from meat and dairy production are on track to contribute 70 percent of the total allowable greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, the BBC reports, fast food chains’ decisions have a lot of impact on the planet, although most pledges have centered around packaging. As some of the largest brands on the planet, these moves will not only cut back on climate change causing emissions and pollution, but provide an example to other businesses.

1. McDonald’s

The world’s biggest restaurant company in 2018 was the first fast food company to commit to sustainability. McDonald’s pledged that by 2025, “100 percent of McDonald’s guest packaging will come from renewable, recycled, or certified sources,” and also “to recycle guest packaging in 100 percent of McDonald’s restaurants.” For this year, it also set a goal that “100 percent of fiber-based packaging will come from recycled or certified sources where no deforestation occurs.” The company has also invested in a wind farm and a solar farm that it said will produce “more than 2,500 McDonald’s restaurants-worth of electricity.” As far as plant-based options, the Golden Arches is expanding its Beyond Meat test in Canada.

2. Starbucks

According to the coffee giant, “an estimated 600 billion paper and plastic cups are distributed globally,” and Starbucks accounts for an estimated 1 percent of that total. It has set a goal to “double the recycled content, recyclability and compostability, and reusability of our cups and packaging by 2022.” It plans to phase out straws this year. (A small competitor of Starbucks, Blue Bottle, plans to eliminate disposable cups entirely.) Starbucks, which said it has invested in renewable energy, has also set a goal to design, build and operate 10,000 “Greener Stores” globally by 2025. Starbucks offers several plant-based milks, and is expanding its lineup of non-dairy drinks.

3. Subway

The sandwich company hasn’t made any specific pledges, and pins a lot of the responsibility of energy conservation on its franchise operators. Subway offers a meatless Beyond Meat meatball sub. The company says its paper products, including towels, tissues and napkins, are made from 100 percent recycled material. As for the rest of its materials, including cups, wraps, bowls and lids, Subway makes no further commitments to make them more sustainable.

4. Chick-fil-a

The popular chicken restaurant that closes on Sundays also hasn’t issued any major sustainability pledges. The company said last year it is “thoughtfully searching for sustainable design solutions that are recyclable, compostable or contain recycled content — starting with new bowls” made of recyclable PET plastic. Chick-fil-a has committed to reducing construction waste for its new locations. The chain offers no plant-based options.

5. Taco Bell

The Mexican-inspired food chain is the latest to issue a big sustainability pledge. It has committed to “making all consumer-facing packaging recyclable, compostable or reusable by 2025 worldwide,” as well as adding recycling and/or composting bins to all restaurants, “where infrastructure permits.” Last year, it committed to more sustainable beef. Taco Bell has long featured vegetarian and vegan options, and recently made them more prominent on its menu.

6. Burger King

The other burger chain also hasn’t set any firm sustainability commitments for the decade. Rather, it said it will “continuously review our policies on animal welfare, sourcing and environmental impact to ensure that we remain good corporate citizens in the communities we serve.” The company, responding to a Change.org petition, said it will stop giving out plastic toys, but only in the U.K. At least you can get the Impossible Whopper at every U.S. store.

Of course, the companies who did make pledges are not beholden to them. It’s up to investors and consumers to hold each company responsible to do their part to reducing their contributions to climate change.

If any company updates their pledges, we will revisit and update this article.

3 Predictions for the Ghost Kitchen in 2020

In 2019, the idea of a restaurant kitchen with no dining room that would exist solely for the purpose of fulfilling off-premises orders was an intriguing but little-known concept. Fast forward 12 months, and ghost kitchens are now a major talking point in the discussion around how to meet customer demand for delivery and takeout orders. And it’s not just restaurants getting involved. Third-party delivery services like DoorDash have opened their own ghost kitchen facilities, companies like Kitchen United, who provide kitchen infrastructure to other brands, are expanding across the globe, and even non-restaurant food brands are capitalizing on the craze.

It’s still early days for the ghost kitchen concept, and as I noted with The Spoon’s most recent market map, this is a part of the restaurant industry that will change rapidly over the next year as it becomes more commonplace among both restaurants and consumers.

Here are a few things we expect to see happen in 2020.

Ghost kitchens will become the norm for large restaurant chains. 
Last year around this time, I wrote that “where the [ghost kitchen] concept could really shine in 2019 is by taking on delivery orders for existing businesses, so the brick-and-mortar locations of those restaurants don’t have to shoulder the entire burden.”

Without a shadow of a doubt, that began to happen in 2019. In 2020, it will become the norm. Many early adopters of the ghost kitchen concept in 2019 were national or international chain restaurants with the kind of reach and influence that will compel other establishments to take similar steps. Chick-fil-A already rents space from DoorDash’s ghost kitchen facility. Starbucks has teamed up with Alibaba’s Heme supermarkets in China to run ghost kitchens out of the latter’s stores. The coffee giant is also building out its own express stores that will function largely as ghost kitchens for delivery orders. Fat Brands is using its own kitchens to double as ghost kitchens for sister brands.

All of which is to say, many brands will create many iterations of the ghost kitchen concept in 2020. As we move though the next 12 months, which types of ghost kitchens (commissary, in-house, etc.) make the most sense for which brands will become clearer. 

Restaurant brands will compete with their kitchen providers.
Both large chains and virtual restaurant concepts will quite possibly find a new competitor in 2020: the folks renting out the kitchen space they use.

Much like grocery stores display their own brand of pasta on the shelves along side CPG brands (or, for a more web-friendly parallel, Amazon has its own Amazon Basics brand), ghost kitchen providers will start to use their facilities to house their own virtual restaurant concepts that compete with those of their tenants. 

This is already happening. Travis Kalanick’s CloudKitchens startup, which operates a network of ghost kitchen facilities, provides space for brands like Sweetgreen to fulfill off-premises orders. It also houses its own virtual brands like Excuse My French Toast and B*tch Don’t Grill My Cheese. 

Not all kitchen providers will take this route. For example, Kitchen United said recently it did not want to be a restaurant itself.

But for many kitchen providers, offering their own virtual restaurants allows them to own yet-another piece of the restaurant stack and therefore more revenue and the all-important customer data. And as more and more non-restaurant food brands, from diets to celebrity chefs, try out virtual concepts, launching a virtual restaurant will (in theory, at least) get simpler for these kitchen providers to do without incurring much additional overhead. No, B*tch Don’t Grill My Cheese won’t stand a chance against a big brand like Chick-fil-A if a customer is really craving those waffle fries, but in the future, the two entities won’t be working out of the same ghost kitchen facility anyway.

Which leads us to our next point.

Third-party delivery services will open more kitchens. Big brands will follow.
Remember above when I said we’ll see an explosion of big-name restaurant brands adopting the ghost kitchen model? At some point in the future, most of them will be doing it out of kitchens run by third-party delivery services like DoorDash and Uber Eats. That’s not because providers like Kitchen United don’t offer delivery options (they do), but because the delivery companies themselves are approaching the restaurant chains.

DoorDash is a case in point. When the third-party delivery service opened the doors on its own ghost kitchen facility in Redwood City, CA this year, it had four existing restaurant chains onboard — all of whom it approached because the company had user data that said people were looking for that type of food in the California Peninsula area. Chick-fil-A soon signed a lease for exactly the same reason.

This is almost a no-brainer. Restaurants already working with delivery companies use these services for things like marketing, technical fulfillment, and last-mile logistics. Adding kitchen space to the stack seems almost a foregone conclusion.

The other thing ghost kitchens are likely to encounter at some point in 2020 is a reality check. At the moment, optimism is flowing into the sector alongside the millions in capital companies are raising. Soon enough, though, the questions will start pouring in. Who gets to own the customer data? Can ghost kitchens become sustainable or will they just pile more trash into the ocean via takeout boxes? Is the model actually profitable, and for whom? Expect these and many other questions to surface in the next year as the ghost kitchen goes mainstream. 

Spoon Market Map: Ghost Kitchens in 2019

Just half a decade ago, the phrase “ghost kitchen” referred to restaurants that looked legit on Grubhub and Seamless but were actually digital fronts for unregulated kitchens. In other words, chicken tenders from what appeared to be a local restaurant might actually have been cooked in someone’s apartment.

Then the delivery boom went off, thanks largely to the growth of third-party services like Grubhub and DoorDash, and by the many digital channels through which customers could suddenly get food. Order tickets proliferated for restaurants, but so too did the stress around how to fulfill those orders without over-burdening the in-house kitchen staff.

The answer to the problem? Take the restaurant out of the kitchen.

In the last few years, restaurants have been moving many of their operations around delivery and to-go orders to dedicated kitchen spaces outside the main restaurant location. The name “ghost kitchen” has stuck around, but now it’s a health-department-friendly term for these spaces that act as hubs for off-premises orders.

But actually, there are many names nowadays for the concept: ghost kitchen, virtual kitchen, cloud kitchen, the (slightly nauseating) description “kitchen as a service.” All those phrases amount the same thing: a kitchen facility that exists solely for the purpose of helping restaurants cook and fulfill to-go orders and get them into the hands of delivery couriers. There is no dining room or front-of-house staff in a ghost kitchen, the tech-stack is more streamlined than that of a full-service restaurant, and, increasingly, the location is completely separate from a restaurant’s dine-in location(s). Now, too, there are also kitchens on (literal) wheels, which add yet-another piece of mobility to the business model. 

To help you navigate the evolving world of ghost kitchens, we’ve created a market map for your reference. This market map is intended to be a snapshot of the current ghost kitchen landscape in 2019. It’s not comprehensive, and we expect both it and the overall landscape to change drastically over the next 12 months. That means you can expect to see this map updated regularly. As always, we welcome suggestions for additional companies and players in this space.

Have suggestions? Drop us an email.

1. Kitchen Infrastructure Providers

The largest category in ghost kitchens right now, Kitchen Infrastructure Providers can be likened to cloud computing providers: they rent companies the space and tools needed to run a business, either as a flat-fee model for on a pay-as-you-go basis. 

Kitchen United, for example, charges a monthly membership fee that includes rent, equipment, storage, and services like dishwashing. Reef, which originally made a name for itself reinventing the concept of the parking garage, offers these things as well as direct partnerships with major third-party delivery companies like DoorDash and Postmates.   

Normally these facilities are large, warehouse-like buildings that hold multiple “restaurants” under a single roof. For large restaurant operators with multiple chains looking to fulfill extra demand brought on by delivery or test out new concepts without incurring too much risk, these are ideal.

Multi-unit chains can also use these spaces to reach customers in areas where they might not have a brick-and-mortar store. Chick-fil-A is widening its reach in the SF Bay Area by working out of DoorDash’s newly opened facility.

2. Restaurant-operated Kitchens

For some restaurants, running a ghost kitchen operation themselves makes more sense than teaming up with a third-party kitchen provider. This is often the case with smaller, independent restaurants, whose ghost kitchen might consist of nothing more than an area of the restaurant’s existing location(s) dedicated to fulfilling off-premises orders. Or it might apply to multi-unit chains who simply want to expand to new areas and don’t have the capital or inclination to deal with the burden of a full-service restaurant. Colombian chain Muy is one such company, having started as a dine-in restaurant before expanding its ghost kitchens to serve more areas of Latin America.

The most notable of all the companies in this category right now is Starbucks. In addition to building out “to-go” stores that exist solely for the purpose of fulfilling off-premises orders, the company has also partnered with Alibaba to turn parts of the latter’s Hema supermarkets into ghost kitchens in China.

The boundaries around this category are especially fluid. In other words, just because you operate your own ghost kitchen in one part of the country doesn’t mean you can’t team up with a third-party provider in another, as The Halal Guys and Chick-fil-A have done.

3. Virtual Restaurant Providers

This is where the lines really start to blur between restaurant, kitchen provider, and delivery company. Anyone can make a virtual restaurant, and as the category in our map shows, more than just restaurants are trying their hand at food concepts that can only be ordered through digital channels and are prepared in a ghost kitchen. Whole30, for example, is a diet concept better known for its cookbooks than its dealings with the restaurant industry. The folks behind that brand teamed up with Grubhub and restaurant company Lettuce Entertain You to create a virtual restaurant offering meals with Whole30-approved foods. 

On the other hand, a company like Keatz runs a network of virtual restaurants it houses beneath the roof of its own ghost kitchens. Taster, based out of France, creates native restaurant brands for food delivery companies like Uber Eats and Deliveroo. Food is cooked in Taster-run kitchens.

4. Mobile Kitchens

In slightly more its own category, companies like Ono Food Co. and Zume are creating robotic, self-contained kitchens on wheels that offer restaurant experiences that can be tailored to specific neighborhoods in a city and also plug into third-party delivery services.

Restaurants can also partner with these kitchens on wheels to expand their reach into new markets, as &Pizza has done by teaming up with Zume.

What’s Next for Ghost Kitchens

Ghost kitchens will become the norm for multi-unit chains. With off-premises orders expected to drive the majority of restaurant sales growth over the next decade, multi-unit brands (think Panera, Chipotle, etc.) will find ghost kitchens a cost-effective way to meet this demand without overburdening existing restaurants. The majority of them will rent space from kitchen infrastructure providers, as Chick-fil-A is currently doing with DoorDash. 

There will be an explosion of delivery-only brands. Since ghost kitchens provide a cheaper, faster way for food entrepreneurs and small restaurants alike to test-drive new concepts, we will see an influx of delivery- and pickup-only brands come out of these kitchens over the next year. Many will be born inside the walls of facilities like Kitchen United or CloudKitchens. Meanwhile, the number of virtual restaurant networks like that of Keatz will increase. 

Artificial Intelligence will be designed into the kitchen. AI is a really broad term that’s often misused. That fact aside, its presence in the restaurant industry is here to stay, and in ghost kitchens, it will prove itself valuable for everything from tracking ingredients to helping staff curb food waste. On the consumer end, we expect to see the technology more deeply integrated into the apps and websites from which customers order, improving recommendations and upselling opportunities.  

More non-restaurant food brands will launch virtual restaurants. In keeping with a trend recently made popular by Whole30 and Bon Apétit, food brands, diets, celebrity chefs, and other non-restaurant businesses will team up with third parties to launch delivery and pickup concepts. Grubhub and Uber Eats are two such third parties already doing this. Expect many more such partnerships — soon.

Bonus: The tech stack will get pared down. No front of house means no POS, right? Quite possibly. With less (or no) customer-facing technology like digital menu boards, self-order kiosks, and tabletop ordering, much of the restaurant tech on the market today becomes irrelevant in a ghost kitchen setting. As the folks at Reforming Retail noted recently, “under this scenario the POS is just an ordering node in the cloud that outputs your menu to a consumer and sends orders to your kitchen.”

That doesn’t mean restaurant tech is going by the wayside. Some ghost kitchens, like those of Muy, have a walkup option where customers order at kiosks onsite, and there will doubtless be new solutions created that are specifically for the ghost kitchen. But the tools of tomorrow’s ghost kitchen won’t look a thing like today’s bloated restaurant-management tech stack. For everyone involved, that’s a bonus.

Chick-fil-A Begins Delivery Operation Out of DoorDash Ghost Kitchen Facility

Chick-fil-A is now expanding its presence in the SF Bay Area via a ghost kitchen. The Atlanta-based chain started operating a delivery-only concept this month using DoorDash’s newly opened ghost kitchen facility, according to Nation’s Restaurant News. As of now, the full Chick-fil-A menu is available for delivery during Chick-fil-A hours from DoorDash Kitchens.

This isn’t Chick-fil-A’s first foray into ghost kitchens, as the chain already rents space from Kitchen United’s Chicago location.

DoorDash opened DoorDash Kitchens in October of this year. The facility offers kitchen space to restaurants wanting to fulfill more off-premises orders without having to actually open a full restaurant. Chick-fil-A joins The Halal Guys, Nation’s Giant Hamburgers, Rooster & Rice, Humphry Slocombe as participating restaurants.

The Redwood City location, which will be the first of multiple DoorDash Kitchens facilities, serves multiple cities around the Peninsula, including Menlo Park, Palo Alto, and Woodside, among others, so Chick-fil-A will be able to expand the small presence it already has in the Bay Area. Currently, the chain operates brick-and-mortar locations in San Jose and Sunnyvale.

Teaming up with DoorDash for a ghost kitchen operation is just one of many initiatives on Chick-fil-A’s part to boost off-premises orders around the country. The chain tested a meal kit program in 2018, where customers could try to recreate the Chick-fil-A experience at home. Shortly after, Chick-fil-A partnered with DoorDash for a much more traditional form of delivery across the U.S. Since then, the company has also introduced dine-in mobile ordering for customers, who can grab a seat at select brick-and-mortar locations and order from their phone without having to get in line. Chick-fil-A also operates a couple takeout-only brick-and-mortar locations where customers can order ahead via mobile app or get food at the pickup window. Besides a few lone tables outside, there is no dining room.

And with no dining room quickly becoming one of the new norms for restaurants everywhere, Chick-fil-A is wise to expand its off-premises strategy to include more ghost kitchens. Doubtless we’ll see it along with other national chains expand into other major cities in the near future.

You Can Now Order From Your Table When You Eat at Chick-Fil-A

With the chicken sandwich wars now behind them, Chick-Fil-A is free to focus on other things, like letting its in-store diners order meals from their table instead of standing in line. The fast food chain today announced that it is launching “dine-in mobile ordering” as an option for its customers.

Now available at participating locations nationwide, the new dine-in ordering works like this: Customers use the Chick-Fil-A mobile app to place a “dine in” order while at the restaurant. They then tap their phone on the table number, which uses Near Field Communication (NFC) to direct the order so a Chick-Fil-A employee brings the meal to the correct table.

It’s easy to see why this is appealing to both consumers and Chick-Fil-A. For customers, they can avoid standing in line and customize their order without any back and forth with a cashier. For the restaurant, it gets its money faster (because no standing in line), helps prevent customers leaving if lines are too long, and creates faster turnover for tables to seat more customers.

For those old enough to remember, this is like the modern, wireless version of what A&W Root Beer restaurants use offer. Only back then there was a hardwired handset built into the table that you would pick and speak into to place your order.

This feature is also just the natural evolution of mobile-powered delivery everywhere trend we are seeing. From parks to stadiums to state rooms on cruise lines, to inside the restaurant itself, everyone is angling to let you skip long lines and get your grub faster.

Veterans of the chicken sandwich war will now most likely be fighting the mobile ordering war.

Chick-Fil-A’s Uncanny Valley Problem with Meal Kits

When popular fast food chain, Chick-Fil-A announced it would be experimenting with meal kits next month, I agreed with my colleague, Catherine Lamb, that this could pave the way for a new meal kit sales channel. But in the days since the announcement I’ve soured on the notion. Now, I think consumers will have certain expectations of what a Chick-Fil-A meal kit should taste like, but will instead experience the uncanny valley.

For the uninitiated, here’s a pretty good definition of the uncanny valley from Wikipedia:

“The concept of the uncanny valley suggests humanoid objects which appear almost, but not exactly, like real human beings elicit uncanny, or strangely familiar, feelings of eeriness and revulsion in observers.”

The uncanny valley is often associated with a lot with computer graphics and animation. We forgive all the flaws of a stick figure because it looks nothing like a human. But as drawings or 3D rendering of a human get more realistic, small flaws (soulless eyes, odd molars, etc.) create bigger distractions to the point where these facsimiles become less lifelike, and the effect can be off-putting.

People buying a meal kit from a service like Blue Apron don’t have an expectation of what that meal should taste like. Part of the allure of those meal kits is the option to try new kinds of dishes. There wasn’t anything else to compare it to.

People who order a meal kit from Chick-Fil-A (or any restaurant) will want a Chick-Fil-A meal. But people can’t recreate Chick-Fil-A at home because they don’t have precision industrial fryers filled with oil and a finely tuned army of employees trained to make chicken-based meals in the exact same way each time.

I should note here that I have never eaten at a Chick-Fil-A. Not out of spite or protest, but just on account of geography. But it’s kind of like when you try to make homemade Oreos. They kinda look and taste like Oreos, but they aren’t the real thing. Or when you try to make your own In-N-Out Burger, or recreate a Starbucks latté at home — it’s just not the same, even when it tastes good.

In a smart move, Chick-Fil-A has initially found a workaround for this uncanny valley problem. The company is not offering its signature chicken sandwiches as part of a meal kit, only chicken-adjacent items like enchiladas, flatbread and pan roasted chicken. These recipes are probably easier for people to make at home, and people will still want to go to a Chick-fil-A for when they want a chicken sandwich (which the restaurant will make for you!). It also gives Chick-Fil-A an opportunity to expand without having to open up more locations as you’ll take the Chick-Fil-A experience with you.

But in doing so, people will want that Chick-Fil-A experience, and chances are good that they won’t be able to recreate it at home. It might be tasty, but it’s not Chick-Fil-Asty.

Despite these inherent issue, I still think Chick-Fil-A’s meal kit experiment is a worthy one (even if it might just be a publicity stunt). Fast food chains are experimenting with all kinds of innovation, from robots to a whole new drive-thru experience. Conducting a targeted experiment like this will at least push traditional boundaries around both meal kits and fast food. And if it works, who knows? Perhaps people will drive through an uncanny valley to make and eat Chick-Fil-A at home.

Chick-fil-A is Paving the Way for Fast Food Meal Kits

Today Chick-fil-A announced that they would roll out “Mealtime Kits” in 150 Atlanta area locations this August, making them the first fast-food company to enter the crowded meal kit market.

Each Chick-fil-A box will contain fresh, pre-measured ingredients to make one of five meals, from chicken enchiladas to chicken flatbread to pan-roasted chicken. (Sense a theme here?) The kits will cost $15.89, feed two people, and can be prepared in 30 minutes or less.

The key differentiator here isn’t what’s in the meal kits, but where you can buy them: they’ll be available Chick-fil-A drive-thrus, indoor ordering counters, or through the company’s app. The company claims they’ll sell them until mid-November, though they might extend or expand the run if it’s successful.

This move will be an interesting test case to see if restaurants — specifically fast food restaurants — will get into the meal kit space. On one hand, it seems counter-intuitive to buy a meal kit from a drive-thru window when you could buy ready-to-eat food from the same place for a comparable price. At the same time, it’s hard to beat the convenience; as soon as you decide you want to make chicken enchiladas for dinner, all you have to do is swing by your local Chick-fil-A and grab one.

As Chris Albrecht mused last week, white label meal kit startup Chef’d’s abrupt shut down last week might be a death knell for independent meal kit companies. Those that remain seem to be trying everything they can think of to gain a foothold: Blue Apron has tried branding kits with celebrities, Purple Carrot debuted 100% recyclable packaging, and other companies are offering doctor-recommended options.

Meal kit point of sale is also in flux. Lots of companies are moving away from the at-home delivery model and transitioning into selling kits in grocery stores, drugstores, and beyond. Chick-fil-A could start offering their boxes at third-party retailers too, of course, though they’ll have to compete for shelf space with other meal kit companies. By selling their kits in drive-thrus, Chick-fil-A brings the sale one step closer to the consumer — they don’t even have to get out of their car.

If Chick-fil-A’s experiment is successful, we’ll no doubt see other fast food joints, from Arby’s to Zaxby’s, rolling out branded meal kits of their own.