Dark Kitchen: Advantages and disadvantages

Setting up your own restaurant means asking the right questions before you start! It's important to distinguish the competition, find your restaurant concept, develop a good brand image, choose an environment suited to your target and set up a solid business model. Setting up a Dark Kitchen brings advantages that can contribute to the success of your project. In this article, you'll find all the answers to your questions about the advantages and disadvantages of a Dark Kitchen.

What is a Dark Kitchen?

A Dark Kitchen, also known as a virtual kitchen or ghost restaurant, is a restaurant that has no physical storefront or dining room for customers. A Dark Kitchen consists of a kitchen that sells meals exclusively through delivery and click-and-collect networks. What's more, it's possible to install ordering kiosks in front of the restaurant so that customers can order directly on the spot.

Here are just a few of our dark kitchen customers: Street Lab, kollectif, Devor, In my belly, DNK, and many more!

Ghost restaurants rely heavily on sales via online platforms. Indeed, the rise of distribution networks such as Deliveroo, UberEats, JustEat and many others make the existence of ghost restaurants possible! Of course, ghost restaurants need to exploit cutting-edge technologies and new marketing techniques to reach and keep their customers.

Advantages of Dark Kitchens

Dark Kitchens offer many advantages:

A booming market

Home meal delivery has been growing rapidly for several years now. By opening your own dark kitchen, you are positioning yourself in a booming market. This business model therefore has very high growth potential. Another positive point is that opening and running a dark kitchen doesn't require as much investment as a traditional restaurant. There's no need to rent or buy expensive premises close to the city center.

No geographical barriers

This is obviously one of the biggest advantages of a dark kitchen. This business allows you to address a very large online audience. This means you won't just be reaching customers in your own catchment area. The location of your restaurant will have no impact on the number of your customers, unlike physical restaurants. No matter where your customers are located, they can order and have their food delivered easily.

A smaller financial contribution when you open your restaurant

The main drawback to setting up your own restaurant is often the financial investment. The amount of capital required by banks often restricts restaurateurs from starting up in this business. When it comes to opening a dark kitchen, however, the capital outlay and financial commitment are often lower, because :

• There's no need to rent or buy an expensive location, because it's right in the heart of your catchment area. You can move away from it and cut costs.
• There's no need for a catering room (no need to buy chairs, tables and other decoration-related costs).

Simplified, less costly management

Running your own restaurant also means managing a team! Recruiting, managing and monitoring teams represents a significant financial burden and a complex management task. As a result, not having a catering room saves on a number of costs, such as :

• Hiring, remuneration, training and personnel management
• Room cleaning and maintenance costs
• Maintenance, cleaning and upgrading of premises

Greater flexibility and offer diversification with multiple brands

Offering the dark kitchen concept to your customers is low-risk and gives you greater flexibility. What's more, it's easy to launch and test new ideas or concepts. You can easily move on to something else if you find that the business isn't taking off. Simply delete your dark kitchen from specialized platforms and launch a new one with a new concept!

If you wish, you can also offer several concepts at the same time. For example, a dark kitchen specialized in pizza delivery could launch a new brand to deliver Thai dishes. This will appeal to a new audience without negatively impacting existing customers: 1 dark kitchen, 2 brands, 2 customer bases!

Despite their many advantages, Dark Kitchens also have their drawbacks!

Disadvantages of Dark Kitchens

Heavy dependence on delivery platforms

The most sensitive aspect of a dark kitchen is delivery. Meal delivery has to be fast, efficient and, above all, well done! Customers don't receive their food as quickly as they would in a physical restaurant, and it's often ideal to receive it undenatured. But delivery drivers are no easier to deal with than waiters, especially at peak times. That's why most restaurateurs outsource this service and invest in premium-quality containers. On the other hand, this means higher costs for your restaurant, and therefore lower margins. It's worth noting that strong tools such as RusHour are available, enabling you to perfectly manage delivery platforms, delivery drivers and all your online menus with a single tablet and printer.

Strong dependence on digital communication and marketing

Opening a dark kitchen also means having to face up to the lack of natural visibility and presence in a neighborhood. The visibility of a dark kitchen is exclusively digital. As more and more of you opt for this phantom concept, it becomes complicated to create a strong brand image. You'll need to set aside a substantial budget to optimize your online presence: creating a website, advertising on social networks, natural search engine optimization, and so on. This online strategy will take some time to work perfectly. Internet users can be wary of a ghost restaurant with a low profile. It's important to develop the right approach to gain the trust of your first customers, and then put forward their testimonials to attract new customers.

Hard-to-loyal customers

As explained above, customer relations are essential, but complicated to build. The interaction between you and your customers will only be established digitally. You won't have any face-to-face interaction with your customers. This will make adapting your menu more time-consuming.

Another drawback to this concept is that it doesn't encourage customers to come back, since it's all about delivery. You'll have to redouble your efforts to find a way to retain them and encourage them to order from you again. The great thing about our ordering kiosks is that we're integrated with our partner Pongo, which offers a great loyalty program for restaurateurs!

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