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Without having to worry about a store front, you could consolidate kitchen equipment between businesses. Say you use your ovens in the morning to bake bread, a

Without having to worry about a store front, you could consolidate kitchen equipment between businesses. Say you use your ovens in the morning to bake bread, and at night to cook meat. Sure, there are limits to this, but there have to be some benefits from centralization. Another option for cost savings is on the fly demand pricing of meals. Through some process of ingredient availability, customer analytics, registered interest(voting or something), etc, the centralized kitchen could decide to make a particular dish at a greater volume/lower cost which could then be passed on to consumers. i.e. Tuesday is 'spaghetti night' and you can feed your family for 50% less than other options. I believe this may be how many cafeterias operate. Cafeterias are a good analogy because you have an environment already saving on wait staff and gratuities. This might seem odd to a typical HN reader who spends $300+ on sushi dinners in SF, but this sort of thing could appeal to many people with less income and without the time to prepare meals themselves. It probably won't work until we can automate the delivery process, but I think at some point the economics will work out in certain markets.

pwdisswordfish0 6y ago
> Say you use your ovens in the morning to bake bread, and at night to cook meat. There's nothing inherent to the delivery app business that makes this possible. This has always been possible, but it doesn't really happen on any significant scale.
mattcwilson 6y ago
Ghost kitchens are a real thing, but it’s still an open question how much value there is in building a brand relationship woth a customer from a dine-in experience. Cutting out the front-of-house, the ambiance, and the wait staff kinda also cuts out a lot of the personality and connection. Scrolling through a bunch of generic “chicken fettucini alfredo” options on an infinite grid is kinda soulless, and doesn’t give me a sense of what I’m getting for the extra money between the $14 and the $26 versions.
crooked-v 6y ago
> Without having to worry about a store front, you could consolidate kitchen equipment between businesses. This is happening right now: see 'ghost kitchens' on delivery apps, with three or four different 'restaurants' that are actually operating out of the same location.
mattkrause 6y ago
The deck ovens used to bake bread would be challenging to use for other types of food. You could perhaps bake some bread in a combi oven, but it’s going to be much slower.

pwdisswordfish0 6y ago

> Say you use your ovens in the morning to bake bread, and at night to cook meat. There's nothing inherent to the delivery app business that makes this possible. This has always been possible, but it doesn't really happen on any significant scale.

mattcwilson 6y ago

Ghost kitchens are a real thing, but it’s still an open question how much value there is in building a brand relationship woth a customer from a dine-in experience. Cutting out the front-of-house, the ambiance, and the wait staff kinda also cuts out a lot of the personality and connection. Scrolling through a bunch of generic “chicken fettucini alfredo” options on an infinite grid is kinda soulless, and doesn’t give me a sense of what I’m getting for the extra money between the $14 and the $26 versions.

crooked-v 6y ago

> Without having to worry about a store front, you could consolidate kitchen equipment between businesses. This is happening right now: see 'ghost kitchens' on delivery apps, with three or four different 'restaurants' that are actually operating out of the same location.

mattkrause 6y ago

The deck ovens used to bake bread would be challenging to use for other types of food. You could perhaps bake some bread in a combi oven, but it’s going to be much slower.