The ultimate guide to making the right choice in this new era of choice in food production

There has been a revolution in food facilities over the past three-to-five years, and companies of all sizes have affordable and scalable alternatives to building, owning and maintaining their own pricey kitchen facilities. Add to that, KAAS (Kitchens As A Service) spaces have arisen with individual nuances and specialties. Never has the independent entrepreneur, chef, restaurant executive or process engineer had so many options to bring their vision to life. Many can now forgo the monumental expense and time required to build stand-alone facilities by utilizing these new options to benefit their organizations (and bottom lines) in multiple ways.

If you are looking for a place to cook, develop, produce and pack your products, read on—we will walk you through the options.

“Ghost Kitchens”

“Ghost kitchen” facilities (also known as “dark kitchens”) offer smallish spaces (generally around 150 to 250 square feet) and often come pre-loaded with standardized equipment. Many ghost kitchen operators offer a software overlay for order routing and managing the pick-ups by delivery services like DoorDash, Postmates and Grubhub. They become involved in your business whether through their delivery app technology or operating requirements. This is all offered in exchange for a percentage of your business profit, which can be considerable (up to 30%).

Most of these facilities are built specifically to support food delivery operations as opposed to brick-and-mortar restaurants (hence the term “ghost kitchen”). This means they are generally permitted, sized and designed for take-out only and lack the flexibility to accommodate other needs. Because they are serving delivery markets you will generally find them located much closer to high-density areas, which can increase incidental costs in addition to rent (parking, business insurance, etc.). They work best for companies doing hot-meal delivery with standard menus

Next Phase ‘Growth’ Kitchens

Growth kitchens might look similar on the surface, but they are nothing like ghost kitchens. Tenants of growth kitchens go far beyond delivery companies to include packaged food makers, corporate restaurant product development operations, commissary/central kitchens and much more.

Food brands of any size face myriad rules and regulations when operating a food business. These include, of course, the requirement to prepare their food in a regulator-approved commercial-grade facility. Enter the Growth Kitchen model that provides pre-permitted premium culinary production facilities for brands in a wide variety of growth stages. They are best suited for companies—whether new or established—entering their next phase of growth (hence the term, “Growth Kitchen”). Tenants install their own specialized equipment and configure their space to optimize their process. Growth Kitchens generally welcome longer-term leases for those companies who want the security of a more stable platform.

But that doesn’t mean Growth Kitchen tenants give up flexibility—quite the opposite. These facilities allow rapidly-expanding brands to grow-in-place, with much more variety in kitchen sizes, including very large full-service production kitchens for large enterprises. Growth kitchens also offer dry storage, cold storage, staffed loading docks and warehouses, custodial staff and enhanced ability to comply with a broad range of food safety regulations/industry standards (including HACCP, USDA, organic, kosher, etc.). They also offer more support for high volume production with staffing and logistics.

Perhaps most significantly is what these kitchens facilities are not: They never take any of your revenue or profits. The more you make, the more you keep. They are appropriate for well-prepared start-ups and established corporate firms, alike.

Build your own

At this point, you might be thinking, “Maybe I will just build my own kitchen. How hard can it be?” Well, it can be very hard, expensive and time-consuming. In fact, by choosing a growth kitchen you can be up and running in a matter of weeks (average is 2 to 4 weeks, depending on your equipment delivery) versus a year-plus to build out a stand-alone kitchen. Your cost is reduced up to 95% in a common scenario shown below.

For more details on the benefits of utilizing a growth kitchen space please visit here or feel free to reach out to the author for more information.