Dark Kitchen: Pros and Cons

Creating a restaurant requires asking yourself the right questions before you start! It is important to distinguish the competition, find your restaurant concept, develop a good brand image, choose an environment adapted to your target and set up a solid business model. Creating a Dark Kitchen brings benefits that can contribute to the success of your project. In this article, you'll find all the answers to your questions about the pros and cons of Dark Kitchens.

What is a dark kitchen?

A Dark Kitchen, also called a virtual kitchen or ghost restaurant, is a restaurant that does not have a physical window or dining room for customers. A Dark Kitchen is composed of a kitchen that sells meals exclusively through delivery and click and collect networks. Moreover, it is possible to bring kiosks, to be positioned in front of its restaurant front to allow customers to order directly on site.

For example, here are some of our dark kitchen customers: Street Lab, Kollective, Devor, In My Belly, DNK, and many more!

Ghost restaurants rely heavily on sales through online platforms. Indeed, the rise of distribution networks such as Deliveroo, UberEATS, JustEat and many others, are making the existence of ghost restaurants possible! Obviously, ghost restaurants need to exploit cutting-edge technology and new marketing techniques to reach and keep their customers.

Benefits of Dark Kitchens

Dark kitchens have a number of advantages:

A booming market

For several years now, home meal delivery has experienced strong growth. By opening your dark kitchen, you are positioning yourself in a booming market. This business model therefore has a very high growth potential. Another positive point is that the opening and operation of a ghost restaurant does not require as much investment as a traditional restaurant. No need to rent/buy an expensive place, close to the city center.

No geographic barrier

This is, of course, one of the biggest advantages of a dark kitchen. This activity makes it possible to address a very large online audience. This means that you will not only reach customers in your catchment area. The area where your restaurant is located will have no impact on the number of your customers, unlike physical restaurants. Regardless of the location of your customers, they can order and have them delivered easily.

A smaller financial contribution when you open your restaurant

The big black spot when creating your own restaurant is often linked to financial investment. The amount of money requested by banks often limits restaurant owners to start this business. However, for the opening of a dark kitchen, the financial contribution and commitment are often less important because:

• There is no need to rent or buy an expensive location, because it is located in the heart of your catchment area. You can get away from it and cut costs.
• There is no need to have a dining room (no buying chairs, tables, and other decorating expenses).

Simplified and less expensive management

Being the manager of your own restaurant also means being the manager of a team! Recruiting, managing and monitoring teams represent a significant financial burden and complex management. Thus, the fact of not having a catering room saves numerous expenses such as:

• Hiring, Compensation, Training, and Staff Management
• Room cleaning and maintenance expenses
• The costs of maintaining, cleaning and upgrading the premises

Better flexibility and diversification of offers with several brands

Offering the dark kitchen concept to your customers presents few risks and offers you more flexibility. In addition, it is easy to launch and test new ideas or concepts. You can easily move on if you notice that the activity is not taking off. All you have to do is remove your dark kitchen from specialized platforms and launch a new one with a new concept!

You can also, if you wish, propose several concepts at the same time. For example, a dark kitchen that specializes in pizza delivery may launch a new brand to deliver Thai food. It will be able to address a new audience without negatively impacting existing customers: 1 dark kitchen, 2 brands, 2 customers!

Despite several advantages, Dark Kitchens also have disadvantages!

Disadvantages of dark kitchens

A strong dependence on delivery platforms

The sensitive point of a dark kitchen is mainly related to delivery. The delivery of current meals must be fast and efficient but above all well done! In fact, customers do not receive the dish as quickly as in a physical restaurant and the ideal is often to receive it unadulterated. However, delivery people are no easier to manage than servers, especially during peak hours. That's why most restaurant owners outsource this service and invest in premium quality containers. On the other hand, this leads to an increase in costs for your restaurant and therefore a decrease in the margin. It should be noted that strong tools such as RusHour exist and allow you to perfectly manage delivery platforms, deliverers and all your online menus using a single tablet and a single printer.

A strong dependence on digital communication and marketing

Opening a dark kitchen also implies having to deal with the lack of natural visibility, of presence in a neighborhood. The visibility of a dark kitchen is exclusively digital. As more and more of you opt for this phantom concept, creating a strong brand image is becoming complicated. Thus, a significant budget is required to optimize your online presence: creating a website, advertising on social networks, natural referencing, etc. This online strategy will take some time before it works perfectly. Indeed, Internet users may be wary of a ghost restaurant with low reputation. It will be important for you to develop a good approach to gain the trust of your first customers in order to then highlight their testimonials and attract new customers.

Customers that are difficult to retain

As explained above, customer relationships are essential but complicated to build. The interaction between you and your customers will only be established digitally. You won't have face-to-face interaction with your customers. This will make it longer to adapt your menu.

Another downside to this concept is that it doesn't encourage customers to come back since it's all about delivery. You will have to work harder to find a way to retain them and encourage them to order from you again. The advantage with our kiosks, is that we are integrated with our partner Pongo, which offers a great loyalty program for restaurant owners!

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