Are dark kitchens and virtual restaurants the future?

WITH limits on table-service dining as a result of Covid-19, restaurants face pressure to strengthen off-premises sales, which has accelerated their focus on takeaway, delivery and orderahead options.

Dark kitchens comprise the latest step in the increasingly tech-focused evolution of the food delivery sector.

Coupled with other growing concepts such as “virtual menus” – menus for brands that exist purely online – dark kitchens, also referred to as “cloud” or “ghost” kitchens, are perhaps the most important development the industry has seen since the emergence of delivery aggregators.

What is a ghost kitchen? Ghost kitchens are stand-alone kitchen units that prepare food to be sold under various brands on delivery apps. Ghost kitchens have no seating capacity for in-house diners or walkins, as they focus only on delivery.

Are these the future? We asked Josh Simon, the co-founder of Lucky Peach House of Ramen, a dark kitchen in Joburg, and Michael Hunt, who owns a company called Collective Kitchens that has 11 dark kitchens which it rents out to restaurants and food entrepreneurs in Joburg.

Simon said his partner, Larry Hodes, started a dark kitchen before Covid-19, as a way for restaurants to offer more value to their customers and use kitchen space more efficiently.

As restaurateurs who keep a close eye on global trends, they had seen how well the dark kitchen model was working in cities such as New York, London and Rome, and wanted to trial the concept here at home.

“When Covid-19 hit, it accelerated the need for food delivery, and we saw an opportunity to expand our dark kitchen offering, which is called The Dark Kitchen, which specialises in pizza and is the only ninth slice pizza in the world. Then came Bagel Burgers, and with the recent lockdown, we saw an opportunity to launch Lucky Peach House of Ramen.”

He said that by embracing the trend, SMEs, which were fast becoming the backbone of our economy, could be supported and customers could be exposed to new types of food.

“This trend is here to stay. The dark kitchen trend allows restaurants to operate with lean overheads and adapt to the latest food trends,” he said.

Hunt agreed. He said dark kitchens coud make delivery profitable, because they reduced costs significantly.

“Our team has been researching and looking at the dark kitchen trend in Europe and the US even pre-pandemic, with the strong belief that delivery is the future. During the pandemic, we were forced to pivot some of our restaurants to optimise for delivery, and we managed to get an opportunity to take up space with Collective Kitchens, which then led to the launch of these delivery-only or virtual brands.

“We have launched six virtual stores in the past 12 months, which would be impossible in the traditional restaurant space,” he said.