2 ms·

The owner (of the restaurant concept) and the chef are often the same person in operations like this. It might take less capital to get off the ground than a fu

The owner (of the restaurant concept) and the chef are often the same person in operations like this. It might take less capital to get off the ground than a full-scale restaurant. Almost certainly less, considering you have to do all the same things in a restaurant, plus hire and decorate front of house. By corollary, there's less at risk by trying a cloud kitchen first. It's a way to fail inexpensively. More generally, most people don't have the luxury to simply do whatever they would optimally prefer to. They generally have to trade off preferences and pragmatics. Dreams don't put food on the table. So if there's a niche, in evolution or business, something is going to fill it eventually.

mattmaroon 7y ago
It's orders of magnitude less. Where I live, in a very cheap part of the country, I could buy a failed restaurant with enough of the pieces in place to not have to build out (permitting is a nightmare in the food world) for let's say $50k. That'd be a bad place in a bad area with most of the appliances gone. But I'd still have a hood and sprinklers and plumbing, so I'd be able to sink another $50k in and have a kitchen running before too long. If I wanted a bad failed restaurant somewhere that might actually bring foot traffic, double that cost. Or I can rent a commissary kitchen for $18/hr, plus $100-$200/mo or so in dry and refrigerated storage, and scale from there. I could get started in a week. To most chefs, this is the difference between "I can afford this now" and "I will literally never in my entire life be able to afford this."
ashleylovesfood 7y ago
I think this is right. The barriers to entry are lower and they have time to perfect menus and recipes. That said, the delivery element changes the way a chef is going to think about food. I see this model as being super helpful for food trucks (that have already have a customer following) to extend their sales during the down months or bad weather days.

mattmaroon 7y ago

It's orders of magnitude less. Where I live, in a very cheap part of the country, I could buy a failed restaurant with enough of the pieces in place to not have to build out (permitting is a nightmare in the food world) for let's say $50k. That'd be a bad place in a bad area with most of the appliances gone. But I'd still have a hood and sprinklers and plumbing, so I'd be able to sink another $50k in and have a kitchen running before too long. If I wanted a bad failed restaurant somewhere that might actually bring foot traffic, double that cost. Or I can rent a commissary kitchen for $18/hr, plus $100-$200/mo or so in dry and refrigerated storage, and scale from there. I could get started in a week. To most chefs, this is the difference between "I can afford this now" and "I will literally never in my entire life be able to afford this."

ashleylovesfood 7y ago

I think this is right. The barriers to entry are lower and they have time to perfect menus and recipes. That said, the delivery element changes the way a chef is going to think about food. I see this model as being super helpful for food trucks (that have already have a customer following) to extend their sales during the down months or bad weather days.