A concept that is empowering millions of restaurants, chefs, and food entrepreneurs.
Customers have moved away from wanting to dine in at restaurants. They prefer to enjoy the comfort of staying in and ordering food, without having to break a bank, deal with the never-ending traffic and wait in long queues.
Food delivery has been transformative, not just for customers but for restaurateurs as well. The opportunity is huge for the restaurant industry. On an individual level, it allows local brands to scale beyond their retail footprint, and reach new customers in entirely new ways at a much lower cost.
With this rise of new delivery platforms, restaurants are able to reach new customers and grow their sales, without having to worry about how many seats they have in their dining room. But we can’t avoid the limitations.
Kitchen space in prime locations is often expensive, and restaurants can only handle preparing a certain number of meals at a time. This brings us to the emergence of a concept called Virtual Kitchens!
Virtual Kitchen: A Million Dollar Concept
A virtual kitchen is a professional food preparation and cooking facility set up for the preparation of delivery-only meals. It contains the kitchen equipment and facilities needed for the preparation of restaurant meals, but has no dining area for walk-in customers.
This concept help take advantage of the delivery boom without enduring the challenges of building out additional locations. It also offers a turnkey solution by providing a fully integrated technological solution to help businesses grow their sales.
Other terminologies for Virtual Kitchen are:
- Delivery kitchen
- Ghost kitchen
- Shadow kitchen
- Commissary kitchen
- Dark kitchen
- Ghost line
- Cloud kitchen
Virtual Kitchen: The Evolution Of Delivery-Only Restaurants
While people may think of these restaurants as a recent fad, the sheer growth in their numbers proves otherwise.
- One aspect that solidifies the stature of virtual kitchens is the host of advantages reaped by restaurant owners.
- They make operations much simpler and more seamless as compared to a traditional restaurant.
- They require lower start-up costs and capital expenditure. Shuns exorbitantly high rental costs and infrastructure dependencies.
- They also help avoid the worries about hiring staff to handle with clients face-to-face.
According to a recent survey conducted by us, 67% of the restaurant owners would want to open a cloud kitchen as their next outlet.
😋Numerous Ghost Kitchens Operate Across The World!
Sweetheart Kitchen
It is a private label multi-brand virtual kitchen founded by Peter Schwartzberg in Dubai in 2019. Its first kitchen was launched in Al Barsha, Dubai, and since then has multiple units across Dubai and Kuwait.
It also has leases for space in Saudi Arabia, but has not yet opened up for business in the country. By end of 2021, the company plans on having over 100 kitchens across the Middle East.
From Their Kitchen To Yours! Watch Sweetheart Kitchen In Action 👇
Cloud Kitchens
This offers smart kitchens for delivery-only restaurants. Former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, through his investment fund, 10100, invested $200 million to acquire a majority stake in City Storage Systems, a real estate investment company with an interest in redeveloping urban spaces for new uses, including ghost kitchens operating under the name of cloud kitchens.
Kitchen United
Google Ventures has invested $10 million in the Pasadena-based company. 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.
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 2021.
Virtual Kitchens Are Here To Stay!
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Virtual Kitchen Design Tool Options
It’s a great starting point, especially if you’re going to hire a custom kitchen builder or cabinet maker. You can take your plans to them so they have something to work with. Take a look at some of the best software.
Home Hardware Kitchen Design Software
Home Hardware offers one of the best free kitchen design software platforms. They have an online option dedicated to kitchens and includes several templates to work from (or create your own from scratch).
IKEA 3D Kitchen Planner
The IKEA 3D kitchen planner is great if you’re going to buy an IKEA kitchen. IKEA kitchens look really good, yet don’t cost a fortune.
Lowe’s Virtual Kitchen Designer
Lowe’s uses the same virtual kitchen software platform as Home Hardware. You can click the images to enlarge them to see the level of detail and quality of the three-dimensional design and rendering.
Caesar Stone’s Kitchen Visualizer
Caesar Stone’s visualizer became so popular mainly because of its simplicity. You click an area in the kitchen and then design options slide in from the side.
Pro Kitchen Software
Pro Kitchen is a paid kitchen design software option that works on both Mac and PC. It produces designs in 3D. It includes products from over 300 manufacturers and appliance catalogs. This way you can visualize exact products in your kitchen before committing to any purchase.
ALSO READ: Pizza Delivery App: Six Slices A Day, Happiness Is Your Way!
Kitchens Redefined
These apps and software contribute a lot to the whole look and feel of a virtual kitchen. With this concept growing larger and becoming more versatile, there are scope for new and unique designs to steal the show. From cloud-based coffee shops to multi-cuisine restaurants, entrepreneurs want the best-in-class décor for their business.
Start Your Virtual Kitchen Today, Build An App!
The growing popularity of virtual kitchens suggest that they aren’t just a fad, but the future! Companies like Swiggy and Fasoos (India), Meituan Dianping (China), Kitopi (MENA), Deliveroo (Europe) are taking advantage of the opportunity to build a robust and scalable virtual kitchen model.
This concept helps entrepreneurs understand supply and demand curves, eventually allowing restaurants and food brands to increase their margins and move upstream. This is an incredibly exciting time to be an entrepreneur and investor in the food sector.
