Ghost Kitchens Are the Wave of the Future
Delivery-only restaurants, which have increased during the pandemic, could change how the industry does business for years.
Sunset Squares Pizza has fewer than 1,000 followers on Instagram. Delivery in its neighborhood — San Francisco’s Sunset district — costs $5, while those farther afield in the city pay $10. A handful of pizzas and nondairy focaccia options are on the menu, a couple of salads and a dessert. The dough is made from sourdough and a wild yeast starter, and the pies are square. What started as a pandemic-era baking project between a father and his teen daughters this spring has turned into a viable business operation: Three or four pizzas a week to friends grew as word of mouth spread; the Instagram posts and tags followed.
Several months in, Sunset Squares is still a bit of a secret. The chef and his family and friends handle the deliveries for a flat rate of $5 in the neighborhood, $10 elsewhere in SF, and $20 for areas outside the city. But it’s poised for a public debut soon; the chef has hired two additional chefs to help develop the concept further and plans to launch it on third-party delivery platforms like DoorDash in a few months.
Virtual brands, ghost kitchens, and delivery-only concepts — whatever you call them — have thrived during COVID-19. Euromonitor, a market research firm, recently estimated they could be a $1 trillion business by 2030. What’s happening concurrently with near-impossible working conditions for many brick-and-mortar restaurants? Stores in cities that once did a brisk lunch business saw sales fall off a cliff. To mitigate losses, some restaurants are throwing everything they have at virtual expansion, creating entirely new brands that live online.
A market research firm recently estimated that delivery-only restaurants could be a $1 trillion business by 2030.
For the full article, please visit Eater’s “Ghost Kitchens Are the Wave of the Future. But Is That a Good Thing?” by Kristen Hawley.