The National Restaurant Association conducted a survey and found that the restaurant and food service industry likely lost nearly $120 billion in sales during the first three months of the pandemic. That is just the first three months, we are talking almost 6 months now. We could be looking at a loss of $240 billion by year's end.
Desperate times call for thinking outside the to-go-box!
GHOST KITCHENS
- What is a ghost kitchen? As more people are ordering out instead of dining in, ghost kitchens are becoming the new trend and possibly shaping the restaurant industry for the future.
- Many meals that are ordered to-go through delivery services like Grubhub, UberEats and DoorDash are prepared in large-scale kitchens shared by Chefs.
VIRTUAL KITCHEN (Cloud kitchens or dark kitchens)
- The difference between a ghost kitchen and a virtual kitchen is that the virtual kitchen doesn't rent from third parties. Virtual kitchens have their own brick and mortar locations or food trucks and use their own kitchens to create additional to-go delivery options on the menu.
More and more restaurants are trying out these ghost or virtual spin-offs to stay afloat. Online orders used to account for just 5% of all restaurant orders that number is at 20% currently.
According to David Portalatin, a food industry adviser for The NPD group-
The $26.8 billion online ordering market is the fastest-growing source of restaurant sales in the United States.
Kitchen United, builds kitchen centers that enable restaurants to open virtual restaurants, to quickly enter new markets with less risk, and reach more consumers. Kitchen United is backed by $50 million in funding from Google Ventures and other investors, they have two locations in Pasadena, California, and Chicago.
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MORE DATA AT OPEN TABLE