Fifty-two percent of adults claim that ordering takeout or delivery is an essential part of their lifestyle. The response by many restaurants to this dramatic shift is to create ghost kitchens. Ordering from ghost kitchens has increased as the pandemic eliminated regular dining options, and people feel safer eating at home or in a public location.
What are Ghost Kitchens?
Essentially ghost kitchens are restaurants that don’t have any dining space, only a kitchen. The idea is to create food that can fulfill orders through your own delivery services or apps like DoorDash, Grubhub, or Uber Eats. Most places will either use their own restaurant kitchen or rent a kitchen at a commercially licensed facility. Once a kitchen has been contracted, restaurants will create a name for themselves, advertise their menu, and take customer orders.
There are no interactions with the customers and the kitchen because the order will always be picked up by a delivery driver, eliminating a significant customer service role restaurants provide. Location doesn’t matter if you can still deliver to popular areas. Even better, you won’t need to spend any money on furniture, wait staff, decorations or menus.
How to Find Efficiency with A Ghost Kitchen
Creating a ghost kitchen is a great way to save money and create a product that customers want. However, to see the success of your ghost kitchen, you’ll need to be able to keep up with delivery demands, especially during busy dining hours. This means you must have back-of-the-house efficiency if you want to stay in business. Here are a few ways you can ensure your back kitchen is as efficient as possible.
Save Money on Labor
One of the most expensive costs you’ll incur is your labor costs. While you’ll need staff to help in the kitchen to cook and prep food, an unnecessary expense you will incur is paying an employee to clean dishes by hand. This can be a long and tedious process that can be detrimental during busy delivery times.
The last thing you want to worry about when you have 20 orders is if your dishes are cleaned properly. A business needs to invest in a solution that saves labor cost, eliminates up to 3 hours or more per day spent scrubbing, and increases the overall kitchen’s cleanliness. A FOG Tank not only solves these issues but is timely, efficient, and delivers the cleaning results you need.
Manage Orders from One Location
Technology plays a vital role in guaranteeing you can deliver your orders correctly and quickly to your customers. You need to ensure you can take all orders from call centers, third-party delivery services, social media, mobile apps, and websites. Investing in a centralized POS system so that all orders can be connected into one system will help to prepare food faster, ensure accuracy and minimize the risk of miscommunication. Plus, all your data will be in one place, so tracking your profits and costs of goods is easier than ever.
High-Quality Packaging and Service
With a ghost kitchen, you won’t have any interaction with customers, but you still need to ensure they have a good experience so they’ll choose to order from you again. First, it’s essential that the food created can withstand long travel times. Unlike at a restaurant where food is served as soon as it’s finished, ghost kitchens will need to account for distance. Consider how long it takes from the moment you complete order to when a customer will consume it.
Choose packaging and containers that help to keep the temperature of your food consistent. If you have your own delivery drivers, ensure that insulated food bags are continually being used as an extra measure to keep food warm.
When you receive a customer request, try to follow through as much as you can. To ensure customers are satisfied with your service and food, most businesses will include a business card or a QR code for customers to review or post about their order.
Create Operating Procedures
There need to be clear-cut procedures to create a fast turnaround time from the moment a customer orders to when it gets to their hands. Some factors can’t be controlled, such as traffic or the distance to your customer’s address. The things that can be controlled, like food prep time, availability of drivers, and accuracy in your orders, should be done as efficiently as possible. Make sure you know how long your processes should take and streamline anything you don’t need to do by hand, like choosing to use the FOG Tank instead of washing dishes by hand. Additionally, the FOG Tank is UL Listed can improve food safety by ensuring that all wares are sanitized. There is no reliance on the operator, and it is in compliance with NSF and FDA Food Code Standards.
If you don’t handle your own delivery services, make sure the online platforms that manage it have accurate menus and pricing and ensure delivery drivers know how to get to your kitchen to grab the deliveries. The more backend work you do beforehand, the faster your operations will run.
Use Social Media
Social media is an easy way to get your kitchen noticed. Use platforms like Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok to spread the word, engage with customers and promote your brand. An easy way to get involved is to post photos of your dishes or videos documenting the creation process to entice customers to try out your food and increase interaction. Some simple social media tactics you can use are offering giveaways, advertising promotions, and directly linking a way to order in your social media bio. Make sure to follow locals in your area to gain awareness and brand recognition.
Respond to Reviews
Reviews are a critical part of any business. They can either convince others to try out your brand or discourage them from ever ordering. Both good and bad reviews need to be taken seriously by your team and answered appropriately. If someone had a bad experience, it’s essential to take the time to contact that customer and publicly post a response. This will help the upset customer find a solution to their issue and let others who read the review understand the situation.