(feature article)

A delivery kitchen, virtual kitchen, commissary kitchen, dark kitchen, cloud kitchen or ghost kitchen – all of these are names for one fascinating trend, which will be extremely popular in 2020. The main idea is that a restaurant cooks food just only for delivery – and they don’t have any place to serve customers directly.

This trend is fresh, nut it is not new — even the name “dark kitchen” is second-hand. The first one was “dark stores” — supermarkets, which do not have customers — they are only for online shopping.

This tempting trend is also genuinely useful not only for customers, who do not want to wait in queues and have a meal at home or in office but also for restaurants. As the last research shows , if a restaurant cooks food for delivery, its sales can raise up to 20%. But, if they mix the classic kitchen with the delivery kitchen — there is a a big stress for employees. There can be a lack of parking places for delivery, etc. That`s why that is not only a trend for new restaurants, created only for ghost kitchens, but also for old ones, having a network of restaurants, serving customers directly and just delivering food.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of a ghost kitchen? On paper, it’s more rapid and keener to launch your business if customer interaction is strictly virtual. You cut down on the cost of equipment, deal with less official paperwork, and can start selling your food and services almost immediately. But there are some problems with this business too. The competition among ghost kitchens can be hard-core and fierce. According to Greenspan, “You’re just getting the key to a 100-restaurant food court, in which you’re competing. When you turn on those apps, it’s not curated, right? You’re competing with more people than you would with a food truck on a corner.”

On top of that, restaurant’s owners are constrained by the location of the kitchen they operate from (usually a 3-5 mile delivery radius). So, rent may be attractive in low-income areas, but they could not find suitable customers.Therefore, what can happen next?

Ghost kitchens can become the norm for large restaurant chains. Restaurant brands will compete with their kitchen providers.

Both large chains and virtual restaurant concepts quite possibly found a new competitor in 2020: the folks renting out the kitchen space they use.

Third-party delivery services will open more kitchens. Successful brands will follow.

This starts to become popular in the whole world, and Ukraine is not an exception. Premier restaurant “Кухня” which works only as a dark kitchen was opened in Kyiv on September 25, 2019. It is working with the delivery service “Raketa.” It seems that we gain a significant step in the cooking industry — and who knows what comes next?

February 16, 2019