The pros and cons of dark kitchens

Starting your own restaurant requires a sound idea and a solid business plan. If you’re not sure if your restaurant would be a hit or a miss, setting up a dark kitchen could help you get started while taking fewer risks than with a traditional, brick-and-mortar restaurant. 

Let's have a look at the advantages and drawbacks of dark kitchens.

Advantages of a ghost kitchen

Lower start-up costs and overheads

The most obvious benefit of a ghost kitchen compared to a traditional restaurant is the lower barrier to entry and lower on-going costs. You need less space because you don’t have to accommodate dine-in guests.

You don’t need front-of-house staff at all, and with the efficiency of a data-driven approach to creating the menu and organizing the kitchen, when you optimize for delivery-only, you need fewer back-of-house staff too. That also means savings on ingredients, equipment, computer systems, utilities, the list goes on. 

You also don’t have to be in a high footfall area. Many virtual kitchens are located slightly out of town for easier access for suppliers, cheaper rent, and most importantly, proximity to large residential areas that aren’t served so well by the more centrally located restaurants.

Improve sales with multiple brands

One of the biggest advantages is the ability to target multiple segments of the market with laser precision simultaneously. Virtual restaurants are driven by data, so they are able to pinpoint the customer need in an area and satisfy it with multiple brands. You could be running a pizzeria, a burger joint, and a healthy salad bar out of the same kitchen, and serving multiple different demographics at the same time, while benefiting from economies of scale across the brands.

Be agile

Building on the benefits of running multiple brands, a ghost kitchen also allows you to be more flexible and adaptive. You have the data, so you can look at what’s working, and what isn’t, and continually optimize and reevaluate to constantly improve your offering. You can even change tack completely if the market changes or a competitor makes a move.

At this time, we’ve all seen the importance of being able to quickly pivot to satisfy demand in the marketplace, and ghost kitchens are uniquely positioned to do so.

All roads lead to better margins

All of this leads to better margins. The small, focused menu means you can improve the efficiency of your production and fulfillment processes, then use the data you gather to predict high and low volume periods and optimize your operations and staff levels accordingly. If you’re not busy you don’t have to open, so overall, the upshot is lower costs, better efficiency, more orders, and less risk.

Drawbacks of the ghost kitchen model

As with everything, there is a tradeoff. Along with all these advantages there are some disadvantages that you should be aware of before opening your cloud kitchen. 

Lack of a physical storefront

One of the biggest challenges you will face running a ghost kitchen is the lack of a physical presence. This means you don’t have any walk-in business and you’re not part of a neighborhood in the same way a brick-and-mortar restaurant is. 

This makes it harder to build up a natural fanbase for your brand, although certainly not impossible, and means your digital strategy is paramount to your success. Third-party delivery providers offer you a platform with active users, but it is a very competitive space. You will need to put a plan in place to get ahead of the competition. And if you decide to go it alone, you will have to try extra hard to get those orders coming in. More on that below.

Reliance on delivery platforms

A problem many cloud kitchens and virtual restaurants face is being over-reliant on the business coming through the delivery platforms. No business owner wants to find themselves in such a precarious position. Making sure you have an independent digital presence is crucial to countering this problem.

Complicated menu management

Ghost kitchens tend to use a number of delivery partners to maximize the exposure and sales potential of their brands. But with this comes the thankless task of uploading, updating, and managing menus and menu items. This is a big enough job for one busy restaurant, let alone multiple delivery-only brands across many platforms. 

Deliverect’s menu management dashboard allows you to sync menus from your POS. Each time you need to make a change, you only have to update your menus once, and the changes are pushed out to every platform you are using. The tools are built into the platform so once you set up your system, you only have to worry about updating the menu in one place.

Dark kitchens are here to stay

Ghost kitchens are here to stay. As long as you take the time to plan effectively, get the right tech in place, and properly market your business, there’s a huge amount of opportunity in the marketplace. In a fast-changing, increasingly digital world, the low risk, adaptable nature of ghost kitchens could make them the restaurants of the future. So don’t be scared to jump in or the missed opportunity might just haunt you.