Amid the F&B boom, such has been demand that established restaurants have sometimes struggled to cope and have turned to so-called dark kitchens.
At MAPIC Food in Italy this week, the rise in dark kitchens will be discussed and RPA caught up with some of the speakers ahead of the event.
“Dark kitchens have been around for a very long time but the market has evolved and they have created opportunities for operators who, for example, might want to move into a new location for less investment or where they can’t find the right restaurant property,” said Peter Backman, UK-based restaurant consultant.
He added: “Customers want delivery. They have been educated by the likes of Amazon to have things delivered to home and the challenge for the restaurant industry as a whole is to do it profitably. For the operators these additional deliveries add a lot to the top line and a little to the bottom line but there is a need to do it because of the demand.”
The industry’s big hitters have already become directly involved. Food delivery specialist Deliveroo opened its first shared kitchen in Paris in July last year, having debuted this concept of shared kitchens - called Deliveroo Editions - in London in 2017. The company started with 12 kitchens in a warehouse in Saint-Ouen, next to north-west Paris. Restaurants can choose to pay a rent or get started for free and pay higher fees.
Deliveroo customers currently pay €2.50 per order for the delivery in Paris, while the company also gets a cut of the total order amount. Deliveroo said at the French launch: “The Deliveroo Editions site in Paris is a permanent bricks and mortar site, as are the majority of our Editions sites across the UK and Europe. All Editions sites are good for the local economy, work closely with local communities and host kitchens with high standards.
“The delivery-only super kitchens are state of the art and bring together amazing chefs from independent restaurants and high street chains all into one location, dramatically expanding consumer choice. This is good for the local economy, good for restaurants looking to expand and good for anyone who wants amazing meals delivered direct to their door.”
In March of this year, it emerged that the food delivery company run by former Uber boss Travis Kalanick had snapped up London dark kitchens firm Foodstars last year, as he looks to expand his new venture in the UK.
City Storage Systems, which trades as Cloud Kitchens in the US, quietly bought the start-up, according to documents filed at Companies House. Foodstars was founded in Bethnal Green, East London in 2015 and operates kitchens across London, which it leases to restaurants focusing on selling food through delivery apps such as Deliveroo and Uber Eats. The acquisition marked Kalanick’s first expansion outside the US.
Hosting different restaurants in this way has multiple benefits. Firstly, it allows operators to offer a wide variety of different cuisines from a single location, appealing to a broad spectrum of consumer tastes. What’s more, dark kitchens enable restaurants without their own delivery services to tap into the lucrative home delivery market. Working closely with the chefs of the original restaurants, dark kitchen managers can ensure that standardised dishes are produced which match their brand. The sharing of ingredients across different brands in a dark kitchen also improves economies of scale.
Another crucial value in the dark kitchen model lies in changing menus quickly and easily. Many traditional restaurants open in response to changing tastes and trends, leaving them vulnerable to the latest food fads. With no physical premises to refit or remodel dark kitchens can change their menus – or even the entire concept of their restaurants – quickly and easily.
While proprietors of dark kitchens do miss out on walk-in sales and the high mark-ups of drinks purchases from dine-in customers, their ability to operate without any of the high overheads of traditional restaurants makes for a compelling proposition.
