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US Foods Launches Ghost Kitchens Program

by Chris Albrecht
August 20, 2020August 19, 2020Filed under:
  • Business of Food
  • Delivery & Commerce
  • Restaurant Tech
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Perhaps we should stop using the term ghost kitchen. Ghosts are rarely seen, but ghost kitchens? Well, they are popping up everywhere.

Case in point: Foodservice distribution giant US Foods announced this week the launch of US Foods Ghost Kitchens. The new service will provide guidance and resources to help restaurant operators open up their own ghost (AKA dark or virtual) kitchens.

For the uninitiated, ghost kitchens are facilities that house delivery-only restaurant concepts. While ghost kitchens have been around for a while, the trend really picked up steam when the COVID-19 pandemic forced restaurants around the country to shut down dine-in operations.

Off-premises formats like delivery and takeout have been something of a lifeline for restaurants, the majority of which can now only operate dining rooms at reduced capacity (if they can seat anyone at all). Additionally, the pandemic has kept a lot of people at home, ordering in. Ghost kitchens allow restaurants to keep making and serving food without the additional overhead associated with building out full-service brick-and-mortar restaurants. Euromonitor recently projected that the ghost kitchen space will be worth $1 trillion by 2030.

That US Foods would want a part of that market is not surprising, but it also needs restaurant brands to stay alive. The pandemic has forced the closure of a staggering number of restaurants around the country. US Foods can’t sell food, supplies and consulting services if its customers are all gone.

Plus, as my colleague, Jenn Marston wrote last month, winter is coming for restaurants. Literally. That means the outdoor seating options restaurants have been able to set up to scrape a few extra summertime bucks out of, are going away as the weather turns. Restaurants will need to lean into delivery because unlike summer, this pandemic is not going away anytime soon.

According to the press announcement, US Foods Ghost Kitchen service will include proprietary technology, proper menu item identification (a must for wanna be ghost kitchens), marketing support and other consulting services. The company’s website claims that restaurants setting up a ghost kitchen through this new program will need less than $5,000 and can open within three weeks. How well that promise matches reality remains to be seen.

US Foods, however, is entering a competitive market with a number of established players including Kitchen United, and Zuul. One competitive advantage for US Foods is that it’s already a national company that has extensive relationships with existing restaurants, and the aforementioned companies operate in pretty limited geographies. There is, in other words, still a lot of upside in the ghost kitchen space, and US Foods can see it.

If you want to look into the future of ghost kitchens, you should check out The Spoon Plus Guide to Ghost Kitchens, written by our very own Jenn Marston.


Related

Can Ghost Kitchens Save the Vanishing Restaurant Biz?

“Perhaps we should stop using the term ghost kitchen. Ghosts are rarely seen, but ghost kitchens? Well, they are popping up everywhere.” Spoon Editor Chris Albrecht was half-kidding when he wrote that line earlier this week, but he might have been onto something. Ghost kitchens, a concept that only really…

Euromonitor: Ghost Kitchens Poised to Become a $1T Market by 2030

Ghost kitchens could become a $1 trillion market by 2030, according to a Euromonitor webinar from this week (h/t Restaurant Dive).  The webinar was led by Michael Schaefer, the Global Lead for Food & Beverage at Euromonitor International. During the webinar, he noted that “we're going to see a lot…

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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…

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