Ghost Kitchens

Wining Dining

In the Spirit of Food Industry Entrepreneurs Ghost Kitchens

Boost Food Delivery Options

by Kerry Andersen

The pandemic fueled an unprecedented 50% increase in the use of food delivery apps. As empty restaurants scrambled to stay afloat, a new concept in dining took advantage of the unique market conditions and quickly escalated too – ghost kitchens. There’s a good chance you’ve sampled a ghost kitchen menu without even knowing it.

So, what is a ghost kitchen? Essentially, it’s a restaurant without dining space. The focus is to sell and fulfill online food orders for delivery using third-party apps like Grubhub and Door Dash or through their own delivery operation. The food is prepared in a professional kitchen either by sharing space with an existing restaurant or utilizing a commissary kitchen.

In Southwest Louisiana, the owners of Coffee:30 seized hold of the opportunity to offer more delicious options from their kitchen and partnered with MrBeast Burger – a larger than life social media brand with 586,000 Instagram followers. MrBeast Burger offers up smashed burgers, outrageous grilled cheese sandwiches and hot fries with a side of engaging content. If you’re not familiar with the brand’s ambassador, Jimmy Donaldson (aka MrBeast), there’s a great chance your kids follow his online antics and crave his sizzling burgers. The experience of interacting with the brand is a big part of the company’s success and they cemented their popularity by partnering with iconic media characters like Shrek for marketing their food.

Coffee:30 owner Joshua Smith says, “MrBeast Burger harnessed the power of social media at just the right time to fill a void created by pandemic challenges in the food and beverage industry. Consumers here in Southwest Louisiana may not have been eating out as much, but they still wanted satisfying food options and to try a new concept – we delivered on that using a ghost kitchen.”

Management companies like Virtual Dining Concepts sprang up across the country to make it easier for restauranteurs like Smith to deliver multiple food brands out of one kitchen without a huge investment. Bottom line; same kitchen, more profits. What makes ghost kitchens work is how seamless they are. Download the MrBeast Burger app, order your food and eat in the comfort of your home. You’d never know the brand doesn’t have a brick and mortar restaurant. The business utilizes proximity software to find the closest delivery driver to your home, ensuring the burgers are delivered fast and hot.

Major dining brands saw the potential for additional revenue and added ghost kitchen options to their menus too. Burger Den and Melt Down are ghost brands owned by Denny’s. If you order It’s Just Wings, the food is being prepared in the kitchen at Chili’s much like Pasqually’s Pizza & Wings is a product of Chuck E. Cheese’s. So why jump into the ghost kitchen space? Smith lists a variety of pro-business reasons:

• Quick to set up • More revenue – no extra labor cost • Greater delivery capacity and ability to reach new customers • Less pricey than full-service restaurants • Low-cost testing of new markets

As pandemic restrictions ease, Smith expects the ghost kitchen concept will continue to grow. He and his partners are exploring additional brands and will eventually move into a commissary kitchen for prep. “As an entrepreneur, there are so many upsides to ghost kitchens. It increases our digital presence on delivery apps, provides more options for our customers and is a low risk, high reward investment.”

Ghost kitchens are not without challenges. Third party apps are set up to deal with national franchises instead of locally owned concepts, the software doesn’t always integrate well and sometimes drivers even steal orders. Smith says despite all that, the e-commerce side of the food and beverage industry is here to stay. So, if your favorite burger joint doesn’t offer a pick-up option for your meal, it could be that it came from a ghost kitchen housed within another popular local eatery.

Visit Coffee:30 at 127 W. College Street in Lake Charles (coffee30co.com) for everything from wagyu burgers to salads and sandwiches in addition to breakfast and brunch options. Sample MrBeast Burger by downloading the company app or utilizing one of the established food delivery apps in the market.