COVID-19 has led to an increase in virtual eateries. When opening one of these locations, a restaurant owner must ask the question: what format do I want my ghost kitchen to take?
How Does a Ghost Kitchen Work?
Before getting into the format, it's important to understand how ghost kitchens work.
The upsurge in online ordering has given birth to new types of businesses hoping to capitalize on this drift, with one of the most interesting businesses being the ghost kitchen. This uniquely 21st-century innovation strives to optimize and extend delivery service at a minimal cost.
Similar to delivery websites like UberEats or Seamless, customers reach out to the ghost kitchen through the restaurant's website or mobile app or a third-party delivery application. They can inspect the menu, place an order and pay for their food online.
The user places the order, the kitchen staff is informed, and food preparation commences. When the food is ready to be delivered, a delivery driver employed by the eatery or third-party delivery service carries the meal to the given location. It's an ideal set-up for a pandemic era, where in-house dining is no longer turning high profits.
How Do I Start An Online Order?
You may be wondering how you can get into this ghost kitchen trend. If you want to create a ghost kitchen for your current restaurant business, there are a few steps you need to take:
● Choose a location
● Pick your Delivery Method
● Factor Delivery Costs into Your Ghost Kitchen Menu Prices
● Experiment with New Menu Items or Concepts
● Staff Your Ghost Kitchen
● Track Profitability of Delivery Services
You will need to improve your contributions by focusing on time, temperature, quality and taste. Keep your ingredient costs low by following a standard menu that uses similar ingredients and preparation techniques.
Types of Ghost Kitchen Designs
The first step to building a ghost kitchen is to pick a layout that adequately represents your space. With kitchen layout software, you can eliminate the guessing game from your kitchen build or improve. A ghost kitchen planner can help you when designing your layout. Here are some of the things you'll examine through a ghost kitchen designer.
Cabinet Designs
What's the most crucial part of designing your dream kitchen? The cabinets, of course. As the most prominent feature in a kitchen space, and an important ghost kitchen tool, it is necessary to select cabinets that enhance the aesthetic you are trying to accomplish. The buying of new kitchen cabinets is vital for any restaurant owner, no matter their quality or style.
Countertop Visual Designer
With this visualizer element, you can effortlessly determine which type of countertop matches your kitchen vision. The tool is furnished with the most popular selections, including Formica, granite, and marble; when fancying a countertop, it is always important to think about what color surface you favor to work on when dealing with food.
Kitchen Type
Another factor to consider when looking at ghost kitchen designs is the model you will use when serving food.
Commercial kitchens appear in all shapes and sizes, but most follow standard layout world-views with includes an assembly line system. The effectiveness with which assembly-line-style kitchens produce vast amounts of food, from burgers and burritos to sandwiches and fries, has made this arrangement popular amongst fast-food joints and fast-casual restaurants.
But how do you know if this "fast food" kitchen design is the right one for your business?
Choosing Your Kitchen Design
Delivery has always been a part of commercial foodservice, but the pandemic has caused a surge in the popularity of online ordering through digital platforms such as DoorDash and UberEats. Many fast-casual restaurants partner with these in-demand apps to increase their consumer base.
Accommodating online orders requires adjusting the way you run your kitchen. Some orders are prepared in the front of the house (FoH), while others are prepared in a different location. Many restaurants set distinct flows of operations for delivery orders, separate from in-house orders, to maintain the kitchen's efficiency. Here's how fast-food kitchen design works.
Fast-Food Kitchen Design
Usually, fast food establishments cater to all kinds of demographics. They're meant to draw kids, adults, working people, business folk and so on. The first thing you should understand about designing a fast food restaurant design is that these joints have substantial corporate integrity. Can you picture a McDonald's without the 'M' on its logo? Or a Subway without the arrows? Such food joints have a brand identity with tremendous worldwide recognition!
The second thing to understand about fast food joints is that they are not designed to give a significant experience. They're designed to be as effective as possible to eat quickly and carry on with their daily motions. The ambiance encourages "fast gratification."
Many restaurant owners use the fast-food format when embracing a multiple kitchen concept, in which several menus are catered to from one location. The efficiency of the fast-food design helps these types of kitchen serve multiple menus at once.
However, kitchens can't serve food quickly if they can't manage their online orders. If you partner with multiple delivery services, it can be incredibly difficult to manage these simultaneously. Fortunately, there's a solution.
Cuboh
Cuboh incorporates all your online ordering tablets in one device. Refunds, up-charges, prep times and more are all in one place. It also automatically inputs orders straight in your POS, in real-time, so that your POS analytics determine your exact sales amount.
The need for online ordering and delivery is climbing swiftly as more and more players are entering the market. More tablets from these marketplace service providers are given to prepare for incoming orders, which requires the restaurant worker that processes online orders and parallel delivery to balance several things at once; thus, there's potential for user error.
For instance, a customer may write a request in the notes feature in the mobile app for a food addition and expect this to be complimentary. However, Cuboh's ordering-management software catches the request, informs the customer of the additional cost and applies the fee on the back end, guaranteeing no revenue is lost from the transaction. Cuboh manages to save on one minute per online order on an average, thanks to automatic POS input. For a restaurant that takes on 100 online orders a day, that's 100 minutes (more than 50 paid labor hours) saved monthly.
Switch off the other tablets, free up counter space, stop training staff on multiple platforms and manage all online orders with Cuboh.
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