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Seems to me that many of the comments are failing to compare this model to the common alternative, which is a public facing restaurant. The failure rate of thos

Seems to me that many of the comments are failing to compare this model to the common alternative, which is a public facing restaurant. The failure rate of those is at least ~60%, so is this "cloud" model likely to be worse than that? I doubt it. As a model, I think the customer here is not so much a food buyer but a restaurant starter and that is a bottomless well. This concept is a natural outgrowth of the current trend in quasi-legal "instagram restaurants" . It also meshes well with the fickle appetites and food trends of modern day. A cronut kitchen can sell out for 6 months and then fade into a ramen burger for another 6 months, all from the same physical kitchen. I think that it is more sustainable than the food-truck -> sit-down-restaurant strategy that hasn't worked for more than a handful of entrepreneurs. American's love to eat a cornucopia of tastes and dishes but we absolutely hate to pay more than a nickel for it. The underlying cost structure of the cloud kitchen is more amenable to that sentiment.

JMTQp8lwXL 7y ago
I don't buy a lot of food online. If you don't have a storefront, I won't know you exist. These dark kitchens won't even let you pick up the food yourself, from my understanding. I have to go through a middle man. So, you've already lost me as a customer unless I happen to have your specific food delivery app installed -- and that's a pretty fragmented market.
- 52-6F-62 7y ago
  Because of the price of real estate here in Toronto you can find a hybrid of the two. There's a row (for Torontonians I'm speaking about Geary Ave) where you can find industrial kitchens for some of the city's best foods that also serve out the front. You just have to not mind the stripped down atmosphere or taking your fresh, hand-made pasta to go. Funny enough, I don't think many of those places even allow online orders/delivery.
- fyfy18 7y ago
  > I don't buy a lot of food online Ok so this doesn't apply to you. There's plenty of other people who do.
- LaserToy 7y ago
  You are forgetting one thing - you can have a storefront that has multiple kitchens behind the scene. The concept just decouples a kitchen from a table.

JMTQp8lwXL 7y ago

I don't buy a lot of food online. If you don't have a storefront, I won't know you exist. These dark kitchens won't even let you pick up the food yourself, from my understanding. I have to go through a middle man. So, you've already lost me as a customer unless I happen to have your specific food delivery app installed -- and that's a pretty fragmented market.

52-6F-62 7y ago
Because of the price of real estate here in Toronto you can find a hybrid of the two. There's a row (for Torontonians I'm speaking about Geary Ave) where you can find industrial kitchens for some of the city's best foods that also serve out the front. You just have to not mind the stripped down atmosphere or taking your fresh, hand-made pasta to go. Funny enough, I don't think many of those places even allow online orders/delivery.
fyfy18 7y ago
> I don't buy a lot of food online Ok so this doesn't apply to you. There's plenty of other people who do.
LaserToy 7y ago
You are forgetting one thing - you can have a storefront that has multiple kitchens behind the scene. The concept just decouples a kitchen from a table.