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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Kitopi

Event Wrap: Restaurants Still Need Brand Equity, Brick and Mortar in a Ghost Kitchen Strategy

This week, The Spoon gathered a wide variety of restaurant industry players together to discuss the most pressing questions the restaurant biz faces right now around ghost kitchen adoption. Throughout the day-long virtual event, restaurant operators, tech companies, virtual restaurant owners, and ghost kitchen providers themselves weighed in on a range of topics, from the economics of going the ghost kitchen route to building a delivery-friendly menu to the tech powering the concept.

One of the most recurring questions to surface during the event was this: Do you still need a physical restaurant in order to make the economics of a ghost kitchen operation work?

Panelists almost unanimously agreed that, at least right now, you do.

“If you go on a delivery app only and you don’t have a brick-and-mortar presence, you better have brand equity,” Andy Wiederhorn, CEO of Fat Brands, emphatically stated during the event. And that brand equity is not easy to build. (More on that in a minute.)

Others pointed to the industry’s reliance on third-party delivery apps (DoorDash, Uber Eats, etc.) as a huge hurdle to running a 100 percent delivery-only restaurant that actually makes money. “When you move 100 percent delivery only, the economics you have with third-party platforms is going to matter more,” said Kristin Barnett, Head of Strategy for NYC-based Zuul Kitchens. On the same panel, Kitopi cofounder and chief revenue officer Bader Atul agreed there is a “strain on profitability” when you attempt to limit a restaurant’s entire existence to third-party delivery apps. This is because it’s difficult to offset the sky-high and highly controversial commission fees delivery services charge restaurants (up to 30 percent per transaction, in some cases).

For now, at least, restaurants should consider what multiple panelists called the “omnichannel” approach. Some ghost kitchens, like those of Kitchen United and Boise’s recently opened Crave Collective facility, offer pickup options in addition to delivery. Big brands, meanwhile, have the obvious advantage here, since they have deep pockets and a long history of brick-and-mortar business to go alongside delivery. If they’re not already in a certain market, as Chick-fil-a wasn’t when it started serving the California Peninsula area via its DoorDash Kitchens operation, existing brick-and-mortar presence elsewhere can offset the cost.  However, Zuul’s Barnett pointed out that smaller restaurant chains, such as those that operate out of Zuul, can also take advantage of the omnichannel approach. 

Other ghost kitchen providers, including Kitopi and Reef, operate off an entirely different model from the normal commissary kitchen by handling all of the operations of fulfilling an order and the restaurant gets a royalty fee. This method provides restaurants the opportunity of trying a ghost kitchen operation out without having to commit their own labor to the process.

Still others, including Alex Canter of Ordermark and Nextbite, suggested we are fast-headed towards a day when running a 100-percent delivery-only restaurant will be not just feasible but the norm. Nextbite, one of his companies, operates a portfolio of delivery-only brands and helps restaurants add these brands to their own operations. During this week’s event, Canter referenced one Nextbite client that had incorporated five of those virtual concepts into their restaurant and were doing “10 to 15 times more revenue through those brands” than via their own. He said more and more, his company hears clients ask whether they even need their brick-and-mortar stores anymore.

But part of the success of a virtual brand will depend on how well it can build the aforementioned brand equity—another major takeaway from this week’s event.

Multiple panelists agreed that running a restaurant out of a ghost kitchen is more than simply sticking a menu online and waiting for the customers to come. They won’t, if an online menu is the long and short of your branding efforts. Just as with brick-and-mortar restaurants, virtual eateries in ghost kitchens and/or dark kitchens need their own “brand identity,” to use a marketing cliche, something that sets it apart from the dozens of other similar options out there.

We returned to a chicken wings example again and again throughout the day. Your virtual chicken wings joint needs a compelling story around its origins, ingredients, and even basic marketing components like name and visual representation. Without those brand identity elements, your virtual chicken wings restaurant has little chance of standing out amid the dozens of other chicken wing offerings on delivery marketplaces. See ClusterTruck, who was at our event, as an example of a company that has mastered the art and science of branding a virtual restaurant.

Our event covered dozens of other topics outside of these two big takeaways. To watch videos of the panels and access more content, head over to our Spoon Plus channel and become a subscriber.

Do You Have Enough Demand? Kitchen United CEO Discusses Pivoting To Ghost Kitchens Too Soon

Pre-pandemic, ghost kitchens looked to be the “it” trend of 2020. So you would think a global health crisis that’s forced dining room closures around the world and seemingly increased demand for delivery would have many restaurants rushing to embrace the concept. Ghost kitchens, after all, are restaurant facilities that operate solely to fulfill off-premises orders and require no front of house. If you wanna get technical about it, most restaurants are running ghost kitchens right out of their own stores right now. 

But after an email exchange with Jim Collins, co-founder and CEO of ghost kitchen network Kitchen United, I’m led to believe that restaurants shouldn’t necessarily go all in on a ghost kitchen strategy right now just because delivery happens to be one of the few order channels they can work with. “I think right now the industry is honestly in a state of shock,” Collins says. “As many restaurants work hard at this moment in time to remain operational, it’s nearly impossible to consider different models.” 

Instead, businesses should focus on strengthening their delivery strategies in-house, thereby laying foundations for off-premises orders that might one day warrant using large-scale ghost kitchen facilities.

Restaurants first need to understand if they even have that level of customer following and demand for off-premises orders. “Prior to the current situation we are in, we have always told operators that we are a good fit for them if they have an existing fan base, smart marketing in place and are looking to expand their market reach. The virtual kitchen model works best when there’s existing brand demand,” explains Collins.

The widespread shutdown of dining rooms may mean restaurants are pivoting to off-premises models faster, but we don’t yet have the numbers to tell us if demand for delivery is equally as widespread. A Technomic report from earlier this month found that only 13 percent of people think they will order more restaurant delivery because of coronavirus. Granted, that number was released before dining rooms closed down. Still, it suggests that until we see more numbers, we can’t really determine if restaurants will see the kinds of spikes in demand for delivery that warrant the use of a ghost kitchen facility like those of Kitchen United, DoorDash Kitchens, Kitopi, and others. Collins told me that even in a pre-pandemic world, Kitchen United won’t consider opening a facility “in a market with current delivery revenue less than $60 million.” He added that the company’s current locations are working towards significantly larger numbers than that. “You just need a lot of demand to make a delivery/take out only model work.”

Smaller chains without the deep pockets of, say, Chick-fil-A or Sweetgreen, should instead focus on making their in-house delivery strategy as efficient as possible. If you haven’t already (and I’m sure you have), take Collins’ advice and “get moving now.” He suggests opening as many channels as you can with third-party delivery providers like DoorDash, Postmates, and Uber Eats. However, instead of striking independent deals with each, go through yet-another third-party platform like ChowNow, which streamlines the setup and management of delivery orders. (Olo, Ordermark and Chowly are similar options.)

For those who’ve already used reservation and guest-management platforms like OpenTable and Resy, Collins suggests downloading the customer email lists and reaching out to those who’ve opted into marketing. “Make sure they know you’re open and available to serve them,” he says.

Another common piece of advice: optimize your menu for “people stuck at home.” Pare down your menu to only include food that travels well, and consider family-style options that can feed large groups of people. This is something Southern California-based chain Wahoo’s Fish Tacos has been utilizing over the last several days to generate more off-premises orders.

Since no one can foresee the future, especially when it comes to COVID-19, it’s impossible to say how long we’ll have to operate in this off-premises-only world. It could be that restaurants who survive this time will come out with a stronger delivery brand, so much so that when the dining rooms open up again and people are willing to sit in crowds, they’ll have the delivery demand Collins mentions to warrant looking into a ghost kitchen. Until then, getting the strongest delivery strategy possible remains the top priority for restaurants.

Kitopi Raises $60M to Expand Its Ghost Kitchen Network

Ghost Kitchen startup Kitopi has raised $60 million in new funding, according to an article this week from The Financial Times. The round was led by Lumia Capital and Knollwood. Kitopi declined to provide numbers around its current valuation.

The Dubai-based company operates more than 30 ghost kitchens in cities around the world, including its hometown, Abu Dhabi, New York, and London, among others. 

Like other ghost kitchen facilities, Kitopi offers infrastructure for restaurants wanting to fulfill more off-premises orders and also expand into new geographic areas where they might not have a brick-and-mortar location. Kitopi specifically caters to those companies preparing meals for third-party delivery apps like DoorDash and Deliveroo. The company rents both space and staff to restaurants, who provide Kitopi with recipes and menus with which to fulfill the orders. Kitopi works directly with the food delivery services to fulfill the last mile and actually transport the food to customers. 

The company has also developed an in-house tech stack it calls “a smart kitchen operating system” that “optimizes all aspects of kitchen operations in real time.”

According to FT, Kitopi will use the new funding to open a second headquarters in NYC, where thanks to soaring rents and shrinking margins, restaurants are scrambling to stay afloat and meet the demand for off-premises. Kitopi already operates some ghost kitchens in that city; adding more will give it more muscle when it comes to competing with the likes of Zuul, which recently opened the first of many planned NYC kitchens, and Kitchen United, which is expanding east and has a location planned for Brooklyn. 

Kitopi plans to open 50 new kitchens in the Big Apple this year in addition to 100 additional locations worldwide.

Week in Restaurants: Kitopi Brings Ghost Kitchens Stateside, The Amazon-Deliveroo Deal Is on the Rocks

If you’re currently hiding from your in-laws, stuck at the airport on your way home, or just need a mental break from the holidays, now would be a good time to catch up on all things restaurant tech.

Behold, our the last restaurant tech roundup of 2019, complete with news on ghost kitchens, facial-recognition software, and Amazon’s latest antitrust woes:

Kitopi Kicks Off U.S. Operations With NYC Ghost Kitchen

Dubai-based ghost kitchen provider Kitopi has expanded operations to NYC. The startup, which already operates kitchens in London, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and other cities around the globe, provides kitchen infrastructure to restaurants wanting to use ghost kitchens to fulfill off-premies orders. The company signed a 10-year lease on a space in Brooklyn and has plans for 10 to 15 kitchens to be housed in the facility. Kitopi also plans to open another location, in Manhattan’s West Village neighborhood, in February 2020, and expand further across the U.S. (no specific locations have been named) later in the year.

The Next Phase of the Amazon-Deliveroo Investigation Begins

Amazon’s investment in UK food delivery startup Deliveroo is now in serious jeopardy after the two companies failed to address the concerns from UK antitrust watchdog the Competition and Markets Authority around how the deal would affect competition. Earlier in December, the CMA cited concerns around how the deal could hurt emerging competition in the food delivery market as well as raise prices and lower quality for consumers. The investigation now enters a second phase that will further delay, if not derail, Amazon’s investment and in the process give competitors like Just Eat and Uber Eats a leg up in the meantime.

PopID Is Launching Its Facial-recognition Platform In Dairi-O Kiosks

North Carolina QSR chain Dairi-O, may be older than McDonald’s and far less known, but it’s on the cutting edge as far as implementing restaurant tech is concerned. The chain has teamed up with PopID to launch the latter’s facial-recognition software inside self-service kiosks at Dairi-O restaurants. PopID is owned by Cali Group and already has its technology in place at CaliBurger, Deli Time, and other small-to medium-sized restaurant chains. With the facial-recognition technology, users can access saved favorite meals, re-order, and pay for their food without a phone or credit card. Dairi-O said it plans to install the tech in all of its locations in the first half of 2020, and has expansion plans for the brand itself in the near future.

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.