What is a dark kitchen?

In recent years, as restaurants soared in demand, an entirely new delivery strategy emerged. Enter Dark Room – high-efficiency manufacturing units with a low storefront optimised to deliver. In the last two years, a large number of people started ordering online. With food service sales rising, the restaurant business model has evolved. Enter dark kitchens – very efficient producing units with store fronts optimised for delivery. Dark kitchens allow for profit maximisation for both parties in a hospitality venue. The owner of the restaurant is enabled to make money without working during closed times as our clients occupy the kitchen for their own means, be it to prepare food privately or set up an online delivery only service.

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Locations in all the right places

We researched the locations in highly frequency regions in Australia dense with regular food delivery populations. Optimising a smooth pick-up for the couriers, dark kitchens simplify the delivery procedure, and the whole package. So you’ll have time to perfect the food for you without worrying too much about logistics. All the best restaurants are listed on the Spacenow website, book today using our search engine to refine the selection down to the locations which you are most interested in. Rest assured that Spacenow only provides restaurants with great opportunities for your business. Conducting your own research is important as different locations often provide different opportunities, cuisine can affect sales depending on the locations which you are after so ensure that you have chosen a good location depending on the food that you will offer.

Many names, one concept           

Dark kitchens may also be called virtual cooking rooms, cloud kitchens, ghost kitchens, and delivery-only restaurants. Whatever your name is, Dark Cuisine always revolves around the same idea: preparing meals in a commercial for either private use such as functions or most commonly for delivery. The demand for delivery only restaurants has increased since COVID and has now turned into a permanent business model. The share economy has brought many options for restaurant owners to maximise their profits, Spacenow strives to enable cash flow during periods that before the share revolution meant no money was to be made. Spacenow provides our hosts with plenty of options to make money after hours through us directing our leads to their kitchens.

You have to move with the times

Cloud kitchens were created in response to increasing demand for online meals services. They started appearing initially within high-density cities but are now found far from suburbs. Don Hancey is an experienced restaurant chef in Western Australia. His two commercial kitchens in Perth had recently been updated to let him use them in the morning for the production of food and cooking schools and in the evening to create a dark kitchen. It’s a good business model,” said Hancey.

Benefits for restaurants

Dark kitchens offer many advantages to restaurants of every size. After hours, historically speaking for kitchen owners meant the end of cash flow for the day. However, Spacenow allows for owners to become a host and maximise their space to make money while they sleep as their space becomes a dark kitchen for one of our clients. This method of recycling your space increases cash flow on all fronts.

What you need to know before opening a business

Creating an open-ghost kitchen has a number of different methods. Firstly, decide on the business model that suits you best. You must know the basic kitchen design principles and how to use them to build your virtual restaurant, if necessary.

Get the right tech support

As its names suggest, cloud or virtual kitchens rely on technology platforms for their operation. It is crucial that the right solution is selected. Firstly you should choose delivering your services to the consumer. Both sides have pros and cons as to how efficient delivery partners are or how damaging they are to their margins. When you choose a different system, you have to spend more time marketing your product or service and create your own order and fulfilment system.

Marketing is not optional

Your brand and message are vital with a virtual kitchen, as that’s what it is. No signs or footfalls are visible from the front. Your social networks, email marketing presence and personality have been deemed important to be effective for the brand’s positioning in an increasingly competitive market. Thanks to the internet, we have many options available. Many ways to optimise your brand and menus include a referral program, review management and marketing emails.

Location is key

For ghost cooking, you have to be busy. This is necessary information. Unless your physical location gets a steady footing online, your website can only generate orders. You have to have a three-mile radius to deliver all your customer’s products. It is necessary to research the competitors’ demographic patterns and cuisine for the region to determine the cuisine which will probably be the most popular.

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