A ghost kitchen (also known as a delivery-only restaurant, virtual kitchen, shadow kitchen, commissary kitchen or rarely used also dark kitchen) is a professional food preparation and cooking facility set up for the preparation of delivery-only meals. However, a ghost kitchen differs from a virtual restaurant in that a ghost kitchen is not necessarily a restaurant brand in itself and may contain kitchen space and facilities for more than one restaurant brand.
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Article
1.
- The plant-based brand Strong Roots sold through a ghost kitchen during the pandemic.
- As a result, its founder has big plans to expand the brand at restaurants as society opens up.
- The pandemic has highlighted the need for CPG (Consumer Packaged Goods) brands to get creative with how they sell.
2. One year ago, Sam Dennigan got his plant-based brand into Whole Foods stores nationwide just before most retailers stopped adding products to their shelves during the pandemic. Despite the good timing, Dennigan faced another problem as society shut down: How could he promote Strong Roots to new customers?
3. Strong Roots makes products including pumpkin-based burgers and spinach bites. It had been selling for years in Ireland, but it had been in the US for less than a year. “We couldn’t put it in people’s hands to tell them about it,” Dennigan told Insider. “A lot of people took advantage of mass-media marketing. We just didn’t have the budget for that.”
How has what you eat / when you eat changed during the pandemic?
4. That’s when he got inspiration from Ghost Truck Kitchen, a ghost-kitchen operation two blocks from his home in New Jersey. Ghost kitchens — restaurants without dining rooms that cater to delivery and takeout orders — have been increasingly embraced by restaurants as a relatively affordable solution for growth and awareness.
5. “I had ordered food from this place a couple of times, and it was really high quality,” he said. He started messaging owner Andrew Martino on Instagram. Two weeks later, Ghost Truck was cooking up Strong Roots’ products for its customers. Its most popular items include two sandwiches: one featuring buffalo cauliflower hash browns, and another that’s a plant-based take on a bánh mì.
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6. Initially, Dennigan viewed the partnership as an experiment. His alternatives for marketing were limited, with stores unable to sample brands’ products and big ad buys beyond Strong Roots’ budget. And it was geographically limited, extending only to a few nearby ZIP codes that the ghost kitchen served.
7. But the more he sold through Ghost Truck, the more information he got about how customers perceived his product. At one point, Strong Roots added coupons to purchase in-store products to the delivered meals, which allowed the brand to track how many consumers bought their products at grocery stores after ordering them through Ghost Truck. The restaurant orders themselves also provided useful feedback, Dennigan said, since Strong Roots could track metrics like how often customers reordered.
8. And unlike more traditional marketing options, working with a ghost kitchen was a relatively cheap way to get exposure. “Our costs in this project have been, essentially, the supply of the product,” he said. “For us, it was actually the making of a complete business case for using this as a longer-term tool.”
What’s your opinion on plant based “meat – free” foods, for example vegan burgers, hotdogs steaks etc.. have you ever tried them / would you? What do you think the pros and cons of them may be?
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