Imagine a restaurant… without a restaurant. It seems counterintuitive, but in the age of the Internet economy and the food delivery boom, this too can happen. And that is that some traditional restaurants, i.e. those that serve food to customers seated at the table, choose to open a sub-restaurant, which only exists online (ghost restaurant). Or that there isn't even the basic restaurant, but only a "ghost" kitchen (dark kitchen), in which to prepare exclusively the foods to be entrusted to the famous riders, who will then deliver them to those who ordered online. The first to set his eyes on this emerging business, which goes beyond the various Deliveroo, Foodora, and Glovo, was that old fox Travis Kalanick, founder of Uber (from which he had not by chance created Uber Eats) and now pioneer of catering 2.0 with the new creature Cloud Kitchens, an app that rents kitchens dedicated to delivery.
Kalanick's new bet is to bring home not only sushi, pizza or french fries, but to give birth to a new generation of virtual restaurants. Places where you only cook, without signs and without customers at the tables. Activities which, by significantly reducing the opening costs and optimizing those for the staff (no more waiters, head nurses, cashiers and cleaners), bring together in no uncertain terms what is by now the real trend of today: no longer physically going to the restaurant, possibly not even cooking at home, but having the food delivered to your home. A market, that of food delivery (therefore food delivered to your home, not counting take away), which was valid in 2018 1,1 billion in Italy and 74,9 billion worldwide, with forecasts to exceed 86 billion this year. Online food delivery in Italy grew by 71% in 2017, by 69% in 2018 and by another 68% estimated for 2019.
The creature of the former CEO of Uber, who in order to launch the new adventure has sold 90% of the Uber shares in his possession in the last two months, collecting 2,26 billion euros, is however not the only one to have intercepted the new frontier of catering, and that is of many specific micro-activities, which rent the kitchens only for the time necessary to prepare the dishes to be delivered at home. For a couple of years, for example, Deliveroo itself has launched Virtual Brands, a project dedicated to restaurants that allows you to open a virtual business to offer new dishes and new types of cuisine that can hardly be combined with a traditional business. According to the platform, this is a solution that in some cases leads to restaurants an increase in turnover of up to over 400%.
Karma Kitchen was born in London, while Kitchen United, a Google-backed startup, plans to open more than a dozen dedicated delivery kitchens in the US, charging a monthly membership fee that includes premises, back-of-house services, such as a dishwasher, and access to its online ordering technology system from a range of delivery apps. In the age of the sharing economy, even food is going virtual.
