How to Get into Ghost Kitchens

How to Get into Ghost Kitchens

According to Euromonitor, ghost kitchens could be a $1 trillion global business by 2030. Ghost kitchens are restaurants with no seats, whose business is all takeout. Depending on the setup, customers pickup their food from cubbies, counters, pickup windows or drive-thrus, but most often they have it delivered.

Ghost kitchens operate in several ways: An operator may open a ghost kitchen out of a small space and operate it independently; an operator may open a ghost kitchen in a commissary, which houses a number of other restaurants, all operating as ghost kitchens; or, finally, some brands license their brand and menu to another operator that preps, cooks and sells the food through its own kitchen.

Ghost kitchens offer a tremendous opportunity to restaurant operators. The investment to open one is smaller than launching a traditional concept and they can open much faster. And, in the wake of the pandemic, the rewards have been reaped much faster than was ever anticipated.

Zalat Pizza has 10 locations in the Dallas region, eight of which are ghost kitchens, operated by Zalat staff. “Our model’s going to be 100% smaller box, no dine in, going forward,” says Khanh Nguyen, CEO and founder.

In fact, he had decided this was the direction he wanted his business to go in two years ago. “We made a determination that the less traditional our restaurants were the more efficient they were the more profitable they were, and the fewer headaches.”

The ghost kitchens are around 1,500 square feet, compared to around 2,000 for the traditional locations, and offer a streamlined operation, including additional prep areas and pickup windows directly into the kitchen “to create better flow,” says Nguyen. The restaurants are open concepts so guests can see the kitchen directly behind the counter.

This size space “is just enough,” Nguyen says, for a pizza line, refrigeration and an expo window. But the smaller kitchens also work better, he says. “When we had a larger kitchen we tended to spread out but the larger size just caused extra footsteps from one station to the other.”

To be able to fit into a small space but also to offer the best food possible, Zalat Pizza offers nothing but pizza and side salads. This means minimal storage and refrigeration is needed.

At first the restaurants also had their own delivery staff but to simplify operations Nguyen axed that and moved to third-party delivery. Between 70% and 80% of Zalat Pizza’s business is through third-party delivery companies, Nguyen says. Mostly, the ghost kitchens have one window, though two have a second. “We’ve found that for up about $2 million in sales, one window is sufficient,” Nguyen says.

The windows are walkup only, deliberately, because so many orders come in at once and the pizzas take 8 to 10 minutes, so a drive-thru would get backed up, Nguyen says.

Because it can be hard to get a foothold as a ghost kitchen in a market that’s bustling with restaurants trying to retool their business into smaller locations, gaining loyal customers can be hard. To help form relationships with customers, Zalat has a Pizza Gram program “to extend our individuality and brand identity,” Nguyen says. “We write Pizza Grams on our pizza boxes — inside the top of the pizza box — so it’s the first thing customers see when they open it.”