Ghost kitchen

A ghost kitchen may also be known as a delivery kitchen, virtual kitchen, shadow kitchen, commissary kitchen, dark kitchen, or cloud kitchen.

Ghost kitchens[6] have emerged as a business model in response to the rapid growth in consumer demand for restaurant delivery meals,.[3] and the lower costs incurred by using kitchen facilities located outside of high-rent, high-foot-trafficked urban locations.[7] In addition to equipped kitchen space, ghost kitchen operators can offer point of sale and ordering software that accommodates various delivery platforms (GrubHub, UberEats, DoorDash, e.g.) and dedicated parking areas for delivery drivers.[5] Using a ghost kitchen allows established restaurants with dining-in service to expand their delivery operations without adding stress to the existing kitchen, frees up parking taken by the delivery vehicles, and allows them to enter new neighborhoods at lower cost.[8]

• Sweetheart Kitchen - is a private label Multi-Brand Virtual Kitchen founded by Peter Schatzberg in Dubai on April 2019. Its first kitchen was launched in September 2019 in Al Barsha, Dubai, and since then has multiple units across Dubai and Kuwait, and plans to launch in KSA in September 2020. By end of 2021, they plan on having over 100 kitchens across the Middle East. "Competitive Advantage: Serial Entrepreneur Peter Schatzberg, Founder And CEO, Sweetheart Kitchen", entreprenuer.com, December 8, 2019

• Bamboo Asia Oakland - Bay Area fast-casual chain Bamboo Asia opened a 10,000-square-foot cloud kitchen in Oakland on January 2018.

• CloudCooks is an on-demand technology company started by Chris Signore on September 11, 2017. CloudCooks designs, builds and leases delivery kitchens to local chefs, who create their own menus that can be delivered to local patrons. CloudCooks' model invests heavily into turning underdeveloped or undesired real-estate into professional kitchens; by bringing together talented operators, chefs, food producers, and patrons. Their first delivery kitchen was GhostKITCHEN, a 24/7 delivery-only restaurant located in Ottawa, Ontario that began as a way to have high-quality food delivered, without needing an expensive real-estate location, or the traditional front-of-house dining room experiences found in typical brick and mortar restaurants.

• CloudKitchens - Through his investment fund, 10100, former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick acquired majority control of City Storage Systems, a real estate investment company with an interest in redeveloping urban spaces for new uses, including ghost kitchens,[9] operating under the name of CloudKitchens.[10] The company describes itself as offering "smart kitchens for delivery-only restaurants." Kalanick invested $300 million into the venture. The other major investor is Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund which invested $400 million.[11]

• Commissary Connect - Vancouver, BC, Canada network of commissaries and shared-use production facilities in operation since 2013. Commissary Connect leases space to multiple food businesses and entrepreneurs to support food delivery and other methodologies for local food. In addition to facilities, Commissary Connect has developed proprietary technology that co-ordinates facility management and provides an improved experience for renters.
• Deliveroo Editions, the ghost kitchen arm of the London-based food-delivery app, Deliveroo, announced plans in 2017 to set up 30 kitchens in London and Brighton.[12] In May 2018, Deliveroo announced a £5 million innovation fund to explore new ventures, including developing new restaurant concepts to be operated out of Editions kitchens. The restaurant concepts and their locations will be determined through analysis of Deliveroo's meal delivery data.[13] As part of its expansion into ghost kitchens, Deliveroo Editions has equipped mobile, shipping container-sized kitchens it locates in British cities that lack variety in food delivery choices.[14]

• U.K.-based Karma Kitchen [15]

• Keatz - The German company Keatz began setting up ghost kitchens in Berlin and has expanded to 10 sites in Amsterdam, Madrid, Barcelona and Munich. It has attracted funding from US and European investors totaling €19 million, including €7 million in March 2019 by RTP Global.[16]

• Kitchen United - Google Ventures has invested $10 million in the Pasadena-based company.[17] In addition to providing services for restaurants wishing to expand their delivery operations, they rent space by the hour to chef-entrepreneurs wishing to experiment with new concepts.[5] The company has ghost kitchens in eight US cities, including Pasadena, Scottsdale, Atlanta, Chicago and Columbus, OH with plans to have 15 kitchen centers opened by 2020.[18]

• Kitopi - The Dubai-based company launched in January 2018 has raised $89 million in funding from venture capital investors including from the corporate venture arm of Crescent Enterprises[19] and has now cloud kitchens in UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, US and UK.[20] [21]

• Mumbai-based Rebel Foods, which began as a restaurant food delivery company, has expanded into cloud kitchens.[22] In September 2019 the company announced a new round of investment from Goldman Sachs and other partners totaling $2 billion rupees ($28 million). Earlier funders include Sequoia Capital, LightboxVC and Sistema Asia Fund.[23] The company claims over 200 cloud kitchen locations in India.

• Swiggy Access, the cloud kitchen arm of Swiggy India's largest food delivery startups, has established 1,000 cloud kitchens across 14 cities in the country for its restaurant partners.[24]

• UberEats, ride service Uber's food delivery service and app opened its first ghost kitchen in Paris in 2019[25] and has since added more, though none in the US.

• Zuul Kitchens, which opened a location in New York City’s SoHo neighborhood in 2019 with nine separate kitchen units.[26][27]

A variation on the ghost kitchen set-up is the partnership announced by Starbucks and Hema, the Chinese supermarket chain owned by Alibaba.[28] Under the agreement announced in 2018, Starbucks will convert sections of Hema grocery stores' kitchen facilities into virtual Starbucks kitchens, dedicated to selling coffee and baked goods which will be delivered by Alibaba’s food-delivery unit, Ele.me.[29] A similar arrangement was announced in September 2019 bringing together the food and lifestyle magazine, Bon Appetit, the Chicago-based restaurant group Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises (LEYE) and Grubhub, in which Bon Appetit uses LEYE kitchen space and kitchen staff to create Bon Appetit recipes for delivery by Grubhub.[30]