Page 118 - Entrepreneur - USA (January - February 2020)

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Dining out just doesn’t hold the appeal that it once did. with QSRs and franchise operators, who are using them to expand
“Customers expect options that align with their lifestyles,” says their restaurants’ delivery capacity without the overhead that comes
Christopher Sebes, partner in Results Thru Strategy, a hospitality with parking lots, tables, and neon signs.
consulting firm. “So if I’m going to watch Netflix at home, maybe I So, for example, a Chick-fil-A could pay for space inside a
don’t want to cook. Maybe I want Chipotle or Outback delivered to ghost kitchen—and then, when an order comes in via Seamless,
my home.” DoorDash, Uber Eats, or some other platform, the food is made
That demand for on-demand food has cre- there instead of at an actual Chick-fil-A. The
ated a major shift in spending. In 2017, U.S. customer receives the same chicken strips, nug-
food delivery was a $43 billion market. By gets, and sandwiches, but after eliminating the
“With all these apps
2022, analysts expect it to hit $76 billion. costs associated with a physical location, the
going at once, it’s
That’s a projected 77 percent growth in just company pays less to make them.
like bing, bing, bing:
five years—and to fill that demand, restau- Part of the allure for restaurants is that ghost
DoorDash, Postmates,
rants will have to rethink the ratio of griddles kitchens are built to maximize efficiency, with
Grubhub. You can get
to tables. That’s why many of them, Koontz infrastructure and technology that helps food
stressed-out easily.”
included, are turning to ghost kitchens. move from the kitchen to the customer with a
They’re a logical answer to the question: How speed that makes the teenage-pizza-boy model
can we best serve customers who aren’t even look like the U.S. Postal Service.
walking into our restaurant? Ghost kitchens are still a relatively new concept, but the indus-
Think of a ghost kitchen as a shared workspace. Each brand try already features a number of fast-growing companies. One is
claims a small stake of a big building and receives equal access to called CloudKitchens, and it’s backed by former Uber CEO Travis
common services such as dishwashing, cleaning and maintenance, Kalanick and recently landed $400 million in funding from Saudi
and delivery. These operations sometimes go by other names, such Arabia. Reef Technologies, a parking lot management platform,
as virtual or smart kitchens. But they’ve become especially popular secured a $1 billion valuation thanks to a SoftBank investment.

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