Reinvent your restaurant with a Houston ghost kitchen

Ghost kitchens, also known as dark kitchens or virtual kitchens, are commissary kitchens built for food delivery. They’re located within the delivery radius of a high volume of online customers, rather than high foot traffic areas. With ghost kitchens, there’s no physical storefront or dining area, so you only need a few back-of-house staff members to fulfill online orders.

In a ghost kitchen, your restaurant is focused on delivery rather than dine-in. When eaters order your food online, you’ll prepare it from your ghost kitchen, and hand it off to a fulfillment team to get the order over to the right delivery driver. This gives restaurateurs a low cost, high efficiency model to get the most out of delivery.

Yes, ghost kitchens can be profitable. Ghost kitchens allow restaurateurs to increase profitability by maintaining the essential elements of a restaurant while cutting costs on labor, overhead, and wasted food while reaching a higher volume of customers ordering online. Plus, you can run multiple virtual brands out of a single ghost kitchen to increase revenue without the extra overhead.

Ghost kitchens are rising in popularity because they’re a lower cost alternative to operating a traditional restaurant. They’re also focused on delivery, which has grown 300% faster than dine-in since 2014. That means restaurateurs are using ghost kitchens to future-proof their business and accelerate growth.

Ghost kitchens help restaurateurs grow their business by doing delivery right. The way we dine has changed, and ghost kitchens allow restaurant operators to capture food delivery demand without sacrificing their bottom line. They’re also a great way to expand to new markets without spending time and money on a traditional restaurant buildout. You can easily expand your restaurant brand to different cities across the country such as Los Angeles or New York.

The cost of ghost kitchens varies by market, space, and services. Compared to a traditional restaurant, they’re a much lower cost alternative on both upfront capital and ongoing operating costs. You can get started in a ghost kitchen with as little as $30K, instead of $1M+ for brick and mortar buildout.

When setting up your Houston ghost kitchen, you’ll need a cooking space that meets health and safety needs and a small support staff that can handle tasks such as cooking, food delivery logistics, maintenance, and more. Similar to a Houston commissary kitchen, your ghost kitchen also requires top-tier cooking equipment, from industry-standard sinks and hoods to professional-level appliances.

In a sprawling city like Houston, it’s also important to consider location. Placing your virtual kitchen—or multiple—in a culinary hub with easy food delivery capabilities is essential in minimizing costs and increasing profitability. 

Too much to handle? Let CloudKitchens Houston take the stress off your plate. CloudKitchens manages your Houston ghost restaurant space so you can focus on the food.

You can start a ghost kitchen or commissary kitchen restaurant space in Houston with an upfront investment of as little as $30k—much less than the $1 million required for brick-and-mortar establishments.