The transformation of the foodservice market continues apace. Restaurant owners and food retail entrepreneurs have to contend with the exponential growth of delivery platforms to retain their customer segment. To keep pace with changing consumption patterns, they need to deploy ever more innovative solutions. DOOD offers a number of solutions to deal with the current situation, including the dark kitchen or virtual restaurant.
Why adopt a dark kitchen?
The dark kitchen or cloud kitchen or ghost kitchen is a solution for restaurateurs and food retailers to offer their products online. This new business model allows you to continue selling food and/or offering traditional cuisine without having to receive customers in a restaurant. You prepare all your dishes in a professional kitchen without a dining room, and offer a delivery service to your customers.
Low, controlled costs
The dark kitchen concept minimizes the entrepreneur’s financial outlay. DOOD integrates e-commerce and e-marketing solutions to help you deploy your remote food business at lower cost.
You can invest in the food trade without investing in :
- the purchase or rental of a room,
- staff recruitment,
- the purchase of furniture and equipment for the dining room,
- table service management.
All orders are managed immediately on your e-commerce site interface. You can process orders as you receive them. You can anticipate the often very long waiting times and the flow of customers in a room. All that’s left for you to do is manage the progressive delivery of the dishes you’ve ordered.
In a dark kitchen, all you need is a busy, professional kitchen. Unlike a restaurant, you don’t need to define a catchment area. All you need is a strategic location to make delivery routes more fluid.
Finally, you need a minimum of staff, as most services are provided online. You don’t need to hire waiters and cashiers. This will also limit the expenses associated with the recruitment and training process, as well as the insurance you need to take out for your employees.
Easier management and significant time savings
Running a restaurant is a major organizational challenge. You’ll manage customers at different stages: arrival, installation, order taking and payment. All this now takes place online via a single interface. You’ll also have less responsibility for managing your teams.
You can manage your menus online: add, modify or remove a dish, updating in real time. This makes it easier to keep track of available stock and anticipate supply needs. You no longer need to coordinate a large production line between teams. Each manager can access the interface at any time.
The constraints associated with bringing rooms and equipment up to standard, and with maintaining and cleaning the premises, are minimized. All your resources can be focused on the performance of your cooks and delivery personnel, to guarantee products and services that meet your customers’ expectations.
Automated marketing follow-up
Deploying an e-commerce site with DOOD allows you to create your own customer data that you can use for your marketing campaigns. At the same time, you can monitor the behavior of Internet users:
- Punctual customers,
- Loyal customers,
- Occasional visitors,
- Recurring visitors.
Depending on the status of each visitor, you can launch a targeted emailing, SMS or push campaign.
How does a dark kitchen work?
The concept of a dark kitchen rests on three pillars: creating a site, having a team of experienced cooks and deploying a delivery service.
Create a site dedicated to your dark kitchen
When you create your e-commerce site with the DOOD solution, not only can you customize it to your image, but you can also integrate SEO and marketing tracking tools.
You can optimize your local referencing so that your site appears in search results, by creating your Google My Business listing, and your brand is mentioned in customer reviews. DOOD gives you the visibility you need to attract and retain customers.
Building a team of cooks
There are three essential steps to setting up a dark kitchen: setting up an e-commerce site, opening a professional kitchen and assembling a team of cooks. This last step is just as important as the first two, because the quality of your dishes plays an important role in customer satisfaction.
Deploy a delivery service
Of course, you don’t need to choose a strategic location for your kitchen. However, it’s important to choose a targeted route to ensure a smooth flow of deliveries to different parts of the city. You don’t need to hire delivery drivers, DOOD offers you a delivery service with qualified professionals and competitive rates.
How do I find a dark kitchen?
Would you like to get started in the virtual restaurant business? You can choose between renting a dark kitchen in a shared facility or setting up your own. In any case, the dark kitchen concept requires well-established market research. On the one hand, you need to analyze the competition in the region, otherwise you run the risk of entering a saturated market. On the other hand, you need to choose a location that allows a fast delivery flow.
Rent a dark kitchen
This is the quickest and easiest way to launch your business. You benefit from a turnkey solution with :
- A configuration based on the type of kitchen that suits your team.
- All the equipment and utensils you need for your kitchen.
- Maintenance and upkeep of the premises.
All you have to do is manage orders, preparations and deliveries.
Design your own kitchen
Whether it’s an existing kitchen or a new installation, you need to set up your premises in such a way as to facilitate the flow of delivery personnel. So there has to be a corner for the kitchen and a corner for the delivery drivers to collect their orders.
As far as the kitchen area is concerned, it should always have three poles: cooling, cooking and washing. Always remember to adapt your packaging to the type of dish you are ordering. If the latter requires heating, use microwave-safe packaging.
The success of a dark kitchen is based on two key factors: creating a high-performance e-commerce site and having a fitted kitchen, all complemented by a fast, responsive delivery service.