Are Ghost Kitchens, and Virtual Restaurants & Delivery Apps Our Future?

The coronavirus pandemic has forced the restaurants to stop dine-in options and only focus on delivery and takeaway methods. In fact, options like takeout, delivery and order ahead have become common, and restaurants are investing into systems like cloud based POS systems for restaurants to ensure that they don’t miss any orders and provide the best customer service possible. 

Ghost kitchen, virtual restaurants and third-party delivery services have observed a boost since the pandemic. The freshly prepared meal is the demand of the customer base, and these options allow food and beverage providers to fulfil it. While it’s true that third-party delivery apps like foodnerd have become pretty popular around the world, ghost kitchens and virtual restaurants are still gaining momentum to become a household name.

Cloud Based POS Systems for Restaurants
Delivery Apps: 

Third-party delivery applications are what one checks first when they want to order something. They’ve truly immersed themselves into our lives now and promise to become even a bigger part of it in the future. These apps do a good job of bridging the gap between restaurants and consumers. Managing the delivery service isn’t an easy task, and many restaurants like to hand over this responsibility to the experts; delivery service apps! There are many delivery apps operational now. For example, foodnerd is a popular choice in Islamabad, Rawalpindi and Lahore. 

Third-party delivery apps are especially great for restaurants as they aggregate hundreds of eateries and brands under a single portal. So, this gives a lot of exposure to the SMEs. And for customers, a lot of choices are present. It’s a win-win situation for both parties. 

Ghost Kitchens: 

The delivery only kitchen is called a ghost kitchen or delivery-only restaurant. They have a facility that is designed for meal preparation, has all the kitchen equipment and supplies. It’s common for brands to have brick and mortar restaurants as well as ghost kitchens to meet their customer demands. Ghost kitchens are easy to maintain as they don’t require any dining area on the premises and enable sustainable cutback on the cost of rent and staff salaries. 

Virtual Restaurants:

The future of technology seems to be pointing towards virtual restaurants becoming the norm. These are online-only brands that have all their focus on delivery. They can operate from their own kitchen space or work with partners by either partnering with an existing ghost kitchen or bricks and mortar eatery. The start-up capital required for a virtual restaurant is much lesser than a physical one. As everything is digital, changes in the menu, themes and other concepts can be made very quickly. A trendy menu that is popular across multiple sites is what virtual restaurants seek. 

The Takeaway: 

The off-premise delivery service has been trending upwards since a few years, but the service fees and increased operational costs and complexity is a concern for many business operators. This is why ghost kitchen and virtual restaurants seem to be the future in the food and beverage industry. But, in developing countries like Pakistan, the users aren’t ready to make the shift so abruptly. So, even if ghost kitchens and virtual restaurants become common, third party delivery systems are going nowhere. In short, the future of the restaurant industry is a mixture of the three; third party delivery, ghost kitchens and virtual restaurants. 

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