How To Start A Ghost Kitchen In 10 Steps

Whether you call them dark kitchens, cloud kitchens, ghost kitchens, or virtual restaurants, delivery-focused production units are popping up everywhere. 

The global ghost kitchen market is predicted to almost double from 2019 to a staggering $71.4 billion industry by 2027.

Dark kitchens are optimized to take in online orders efficiently and quickly produce meals for delivery. Capitalizing on the restaurant industry trends towards more off-premise dining, better tech solutions, and omnichannel ordering, the sector is seeing massive investment. 

So, it’s no surprise that many entrepreneurs are considering opening kitchens. It’s easy money. Well, there are a few things to get in place before you can press go and start cranking out orders. 

10 steps to starting your dark kitchen

For anyone thinking about starting a dark kitchen, the first thing to do is consider the pros and cons and read up on the fundamentals.

Then, it’s time to look at the data and choose your dark kitchen business model. It would be best to find the right ghost kitchen business model for your business, depending on the type of kitchen you want to run.

It could be a shared kitchen that houses multiple third-party brands or a dedicated production kitchen out of which you run one or more virtual restaurants.

Here are the ten steps to get started, whichever you utilize the concept.

#1 Choose your location

One of the dark kitchen model's most significant benefits is that you don’t have to pay top dollar for prime high-street real estate. You can look at the raw search and ordering data from delivery apps and search engines and choose a location that best suits the demand.

This often means a cheaper out-of-town spot where you can get more space for your money. As long as there are enough hungry residents nearby, you are good.

Consider the physical limitations and benefits of your chosen location: 

• Does it have parking and access for meal delivery drivers?

• Is there enough room for larger trucks and vans for incoming stock deliveries?

• Are the utilities adequate? A busy commercial kitchen may need a higher electricity and water capacity.

• Is there enough space for the equipment you need? Will that pizza oven fit through the door!?

• Do you need to modify the building to meet safety requirements by adding ventilation ducts or fire escapes?

• If you are housing multiple independent brands, are there enough food businesses in the area to fill your kitchen with tenants?

This is a lot to consider. But once you decide on your physical location, you can put flesh on your concept's bones.

#2 Find your unique angle or niche

The next step is to find your unique selling point. Since you’re already aware of the demand in the area, you can now look for gaps in the market. 

Either do something new or take something popular and do it better. Perhaps you can find innovation in a fusion of different cuisines or take a popular product and put a new spin on it. 

Who would have thought a croissant-doughnut hybrid would capture the world’s imagination? Yet the Cronut was a viral sensation.

If your business model involves multiple concepts, you can create several virtual restaurant brands to capture a bigger slice of the market. Finding the right mix of brands is essential to satisfying customer demand while keeping operations efficient.

#3 Plan your dark kitchen design and layout

Your choice of cuisine and business model will determine your design and layout. The advantage of a dark kitchen is that you can optimize the form just for delivery orders. You don’t give most of your space to the dining room, bar, and serving stations. 

You can have orders straight into the kitchen with a super-efficient production line leading to an order packing and driver pick-up area. 

You don’t have to worry about the decor or guest toilets. But don’t forget to look after your staff with a break-out area and other comforts to keep them happy!

Check out our previous guide for a more in-depth look at kitchen design and optimization for delivery. 

#4 Food safety and other paperwork

The less glamorous side of ghost kitchens is the part that could come back to haunt you. 

Before you can operate, you will need a health inspection. You’ll also need to document safe procedures for storage, food prep, and cooking and provide workflows. There is also paperwork around ridge temperature monitoring, pest control, and more. 

If you plan on running a kitchen to house multiple tenants or businesses, remember that you alone are responsible for food safety. The buck stops with the kitchen owner, so don’t expect the delivery partners or even the virtual restaurants cooking the food to take responsibility if there is a food safety issue.

#5 Choose your delivery partners or go solo

The debate between using third-party delivery providers or in-house delivery rages on in the restaurant business. 

Taking delivery in-house means taking control of the entire process end-to-end but managing an entirely different operation. 

Third-party delivery platforms are easy to set up and offer access to a broader customer base. But they take a commission on each order, and you rely on their drivers for your final customer interaction. 

One of the most significant advantages of the delivery platforms is their reliability and ability to cope with large volumes of orders at peak times, both in accepting orders and having the driver numbers to deliver them on time. 

If you plan to profit from your ghost kitchen, you may need to use multiple delivery partners to cope with the busiest periods.

#6 Staffing your dark kitchen

Staffing is one of the most significant costs and headaches for restaurant operators. Getting it right from the start is a big plus. One of the benefits of the cloud kitchen model is the saving on labor costs compared to a traditional restaurant with a dining room and table service. But staffing your kitchen is still a significant cost. 

Because you don’t need front-of-house staff, you can deploy people in other areas to focus on consistency, efficiency, and quality. Apart from a solid kitchen team running like clockwork, you may consider a production supervisor or a staff member focused on quality control.

In any case, the key to finding—and keeping—a reliable team is writing detailed job descriptions, thoroughly vet and interview candidates, and providing good benefits and treatment to keep them happy.

#7 Optimize your menu for delivery

The look and content of the menu are among the most significant decision factors for customers when comparing different restaurants online. 

It should be simple, enticing, and optimized for delivery. This means streamlining your menu only to include items that travel well. And look at the data to see which items are the most popular, profitable, and efficient to produce. 

It’s unlikely all your dishes will tick all three boxes, but you need to know the numbers before making informed decisions. Once you know which dishes perform best, you can optimize your production line to work harmoniously with your menu and include a mix of popular, profitable, and efficient dishes. Then, monitor the data in the future and constantly adjust your pricing and dishes for maximum profitability and efficiency.

Check out our previous post for more on optimizing your delivery offering. 

#8 Get on board with the latest technology

More than any other type of restaurant, dark kitchens are driven by technology. From the ordering platforms to the POS to the kitchen display system and delivery tech, your tech stack also needs efficient data flow. As you need an efficient physical workflow through the kitchen, your tech stack also needs efficient data flow. 

That means all your systems need to communicate well and provide feedback and accurate data for you to analyze. The specific combination of tech solutions you use will depend on your business, but you want a future-proof platform that integrates well to streamline data flow and allow you to add new tech solutions as they emerge. 

Deliverect Restaurants aggregates orders from all the major delivery platforms and provides you with all the tools you need to manage orders efficiently from one dashboard. Deliverect is the master of APIs and seamlessly integrates with all the major POS providers and restaurant management solutions to give you one seamless kitchen management platform.

#9 Optimize for efficiency

Once your cloud kitchen is up and running, it gets really interesting. You go from theory to reality and see how well your layout and tech decisions work. 

This is where having a solid tech platform is key. You can now analyze the data at every stage of order processing and production to streamline operations and optimize your offerings. 

There are opportunities to optimize in every area of the business, including:

• Efficient order management to maximize order volume

• Streamlining order flow through the kitchen

• Optimizing your menu pricing and dish choices

• Automating back-of-house tasks like procurement and temperature monitoring

• Standardizing recipe data to improve margins and reduce food waste

• Managing inventory more effectively to minimize spoilage

#10 Marketing your ghost kitchen

Without a traditional restaurant's physical storefront and footfall, you might wonder how to build a community of loyal customers around a virtual restaurant. The answer is you have to build the community online. 

That means setting up a strong online presence, including on your own website, delivery platforms, review sites, and social media. 

If you have the resources, it’s a good idea to be as active as possible online:

• Be active on as many social media platforms as you can – Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, TikTok – starting conversations and interacting with customers to build a community of engaged users

• Actively monitor and respond to online reviews – both positive and negative

• Encourage customer referrals 

• Use loyalty programs and email marketing to foster repeat business

It sounds daunting, but if you take control of your digital marketing, you’ll be steps ahead of the competition from the get-go. 

For more on marketing your dark kitchen online, read our ten steps to success.

Set yourself up for success with a solid foundation

The dark kitchen is the physical manifestation of the digital restaurant. As such, the latest tech should be built into the brickwork of your kitchen, from how you take orders to your kitchen display system to how you interact with delivery drivers.

A dark kitchen offers the perfect opportunity for data-driven success. It allows you to keep evolving as technology drives the industry forward, but only if you build your tech stack on solid foundations.

Deliverect Restaurants specializes in operational efficiency for delivery-focused brands.

Learn more about building your strong dark kitchen foundations around Deliverect Restaurants' order management tools.