How to Set Up a Commercial Dark Kitchen
Ghost kitchens provide a fantastic alternative to traditional quick service restaurants, allowing you to hone in on the delivery market and eliminate front of house concerns. A successful ghost kitchen, therefore, has some different focus points and areas to prioritise when compared to a typical commercial kitchen. Location, design, staffing, equipment and more will all need to be optimised for a delivery-only service.
If you’re considering setting up a ghost or dark kitchen, our guide covers everything you need to know.
Choosing a Location for Your Ghost Restaurant
Your ghost kitchen should be placed somewhere that is optimised for delivery, near areas with statistically high order numbers. If you are creating a ghost kitchen that will host multiple food brands, you will also need to choose an area that will attract enough tenants.
The building itself will require sufficient parking for delivery drivers and large supply trucks bringing ingredients. A suitable unloading and hand-off space will also be required.
Selecting a building that can handle the day-to-day demands of a ghost kitchen is also crucial. You’ll need a strong enough gas, electricity and water supply to cook with, as well as adequate room for necessary equipment.
Obtaining the Relevant Licenses and Permits
As with any business, your ghost restaurant must be properly licensed. The permits and licenses you’ll need include:
- Business license
- Food business registration
- Food handler permit
- Health permit
- Premises license
- If your ghost kitchen sells alcohol, you will also need a liquor licence
Creating a Streamlined Menu
A ghost kitchen is all about efficiency, quickly preparing meals for a swift order-to-delivery process. As such, the menu is much smaller than that of a typical QSR, focussing on core menu items without extras. This saves storage space and reduces prep times.
Analyse the data to see which menu items are most profitable to decide which to include on your dark kitchen menu. Be sure to consider what will travel well. For example, drinks such as milkshakes are often not the best fit for a delivery-only service.
How to Set Up a Dark Kitchen Layout
A dark kitchen layout is a simpler, more stripped-back version of a commercial QSR kitchen layout. It still has all of the same essential components condensed into a highly efficient production line and is optimised for your streamlined menu.
See our guide to the essential elements of a commercial kitchen layout for further advice.
Strategically Staffing Your Ghost Kitchen
One of the benefits of a ghost kitchen is reduced labour costs, as front-of-house staff are not necessary. This means you can use those labour costs for specialist kitchen staff instead, such as production supervisors and quality control, who will ensure products meet standards for customer satisfaction.
While front-of-house staff are eliminated in a dark kitchen, cooking is far from the only task. Editing menus, updating prep times, and offering customer service via phone or message are all important to the operation’s running, and you must ensure the kitchen is adequately staffed to handle all responsibilities.
Creating an Efficient Point of Sales System
Choosing how delivery orders will be placed and handled is equally as essential to setting up a ghost kitchen as the food prep side.
One of the first considerations is selecting the delivery app or partner through which your orders will come. We recommend having multiple delivery partners to handle busy periods effectively and maximise traffic.
Your point of sales system must be simple to use and equipped to handle an influx of data in order to balance all oncoming orders simultaneously without customers slipping through the cracks. Data should also flow between your ordering platform, point of sales system (POS), and kitchen order screens for a quick working process.
Online apps should also be customisable to show clear and accurate information. This includes editing the menu immediately to show which items are out of stock to prevent orders coming in that can’t be fulfilled.
Accurate ETAs are also crucial for gaining your customers’ trust, goodwill, and, ultimately, loyalty. Using a system that allows you to customise ETAs based on prep time and order volume is immensely beneficial for this.
Creating a Digital Presence
A ghost restaurant has no storefront, so spreading the word requires online marketing. Create a presence on review sites and engage with ratings to spread the word about your ghost kitchen. Social media profiles can also serve as your virtual storefront.
When setting up a new ghost/dark kitchen, seek advice directly from the experts. Contact us at The Airedale Group, and we can design and fit the perfect ghost kitchen for your brand.
