[mytailorisrich]

> Ghost kitchens are mostly scams.

They are not. They are just a different model than a standard restaurant.

What I have observed in my area (UK) is that instead of expanding by setting up a new branch in the costly centre of town, some chains work with Deliveroo to open a ghost kitchen in the industrial area.

That allows them to expand to a new town while saving on capex.

[notyourday]

> They are not. They are just a different model than a standard restaurant.

They are not. It is called commissary kitchen. Has been around forever. Those are the kitchens that support food trucks. Or the kitchens that support prepared food not made on premises in supermarkets. They don't work for a-la minute production even if a-la minute is just used to load it into driver's gear.

> What I have observed in my area (UK) is that instead of expanding by setting up a new branch in the costly centre of town, some chains work with Deliveroo to open a ghost kitchen in the industrial area

That simply means real estate has not adjusted to it. It will.

[mytailorisrich]

A standard restaurant must be located where people will walk in. It must be pleasant premises for customers.

If the target is to work only with Deliveroo or other delivery app then everything can be stripped apart from the kitchen and that kitchen can then be located where it's cheapest since no customers will ever walk in or even know where it is.

That's not a scam. That's an adaptation, an optimisation for a specific business model.

> That simply means real estate has not adjusted to it. It will.

Premium retail space is going to cost more than industrial space that may be located anywhere in a much wider area.

[notyourday]

That's how people who do not understand restaurant industry think of it. It is wrong.

Restaurant wants to minimize dwell time, which is a time that the restaurant does not spend cooking food for a-la minute order. The closer the restaurant is to the customer, the smaller is the dwell time if the customer is always available. That's the reason why the restaurant wants to be where the customers are.

Delivery-only restaurants dwell time is always larger than the walk in restaurant unless the delivery drivers are immediately and always available when the food is cooked and the time to deliver the food to the customer is the same as time time to turn it over across the counter ( for the same type of food ) which means the restaurant will always make less money in the identical situations.

The only thing that the restaurant gets from the delivery only portion is marketing when its menu is available to people who do not know about it. And it competes with every single other restaurant available in the delivery order. All that for the 20-30% discount off every order. That's the math. It is groupon, all over again. And the arguments of those in awe of the business model are exactly the same. It does not work because the best slammed take out places have 20-30% operating margins.

Finally, there's a startup called Crave which is going to kill this entire DoorDash/Delivery/Deliveroo type model - it gives restaurants ability to dynamically price their checks via discounts ( think surge pricing backwards ) for a low, flat per sale price. Think of it as Yelp Cash, but more dynamic and less connected to Yelp.

This actually solves the problem of dwell time. By offering a dynamic discount based on how busy the place is the restaurant increases a flow of orders into the business.

[therealx]

Sounds like the aim of "Monday specials" and "Happy Hour" brought to digital age.