Are Cloud Kitchens the New Normal?

Amidst the ongoing crisis, restaurants everywhere are radically evolving into cloud kitchens. Cloud kitchens, also known as dark kitchens, ghost kitchens, or virtual kitchens, work as delivery-only formats of restaurants and don’t offer a dine-in facility. With the ongoing social distancing, the cloud kitchen format is more-or-less forced down the throat of struggling restaurants, however, a majority of restaurant owners are warming up to the idea of running a cloud kitchen.

While weighing the tradeoffs of running a cloud kitchen, it is honestly quite surprising that most restaurants haven’t converted to cloud kitchen only format already. Converting to a cloud kitchen allows the restaurant to focus more on the delivery, quality, and hygiene of the food rather than fancy lighting and ambience at the restaurant.

This turns the restaurant into more of a chef-led venture, thus creating a smaller back-end staff along with sustainable dynamics within the organisation. The reduction in infrastructural and operational resources further reduces the impact on the environment, while improving profit margins substantially, thus allowing restaurant owners to fuel in that extra cash flow into carbon offsetting programs, or just into increasing the food quality.

The projected market size of cloud kitchens is expected to grow considerably as consumers prefer to order their favourite dishes online via food tech companies like Swiggy and Zomato. With better dynamics, endless opportunities, and faster start-up time, the cloud kitchen space favours more security and profitability in the longer run.

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Change is inevitable. Progress is a choice.

⁠Normal wasn’t working. This is our second chance to adapt to a new normal that’s better for the planet!⁠