Ghost kitchens are popping up nationally to deal with the increased A new restaurant trend is popping up to deal with the increased demand for online food ordering.
Corby Kummer, executive director of the Food and Society policy program at the Aspen Institute, told Boston Public Radio Monday that the trend is defined by production centers focused on delivery orders only, no store front needed.
"The idea is you save a lot of money if you don’t have to rent a store front location and you don’t have to have your own staff doing delivery," said Kummer, who is also a senior editor at "The Atlantic" magazine. "So Seamless and Doordash are starting their own ghost kitchens.
"What are these? They're windowless production kitchens ... You can't order takeout, you can't go in, they're only [for] online orders."
For example, Doordash has partnered with various restaurant chains to open a shared kitchen, to be a one-stop production kitchen for multiple brands that deliver through the app.
"You order something, it has a separate brand identity online, that's the only brand identity it has, because it's online only. It's the same staff reaching for a different set of spice bottles, often they share the same raw ingredients," said Kummer. "It's kind of as soulless and mechanical as it sounds."
Corby Kummer is a senior lecturer at the Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy
