A buddy of mine is an executive at one of the successful ghost kitchen companies. I asked him about this article. His comments:

- They aren’t dying. Most of them are just not run well, and there isn’t a widely-known “playbook” to use to spin one up.

- Demand is high. Supply of what people want does not meet this demand.

- Lots of people use ghost kitchens to chase fads or to try to get rich quick. These rarely work long term.

- Profitable ghost kitchens are well-run kitchens (or restaurants without a front of house).

- His abbreviated playbook for ghost kitchens that work: prep everything (nothing cooked to order), finishing and assembly should be the only thing done when the order comes in, every order should be done within 5 minutes (this blew my mind) so that it will get to the customer within 20 minutes, make sure your images look exactly like the food you will deliver, get packaging that makes it so that food can be delivered and still look good, advertise (promote) in the apps when you open, and cut back as organic sales and reorders start rolling in, master one location first and then scale out with a provable system, add additional compatible brands (e.g., cakes expanding to cupcakes or cookies) later in the life cycle with a similar development process (but in the same kitchen).

- There is a truckload of restaurant kitchen workers who love good ghost kitchen work — high pace, limited menu (relatively speaking), no front of house staff to deal with, etc.

- When a ghost kitchen hits product-market fit, labor and food costs can be sub-20% of revenue each (this is insane, imho). Marketing starts at 25% of revenue and rapidly drops to sub-5%. Note that this is based on what they receive from the delivery companies, so percentage of sales is higher.

- My friend can spin up a new location in 20 days and $10k from getting the go ahead to delivering food. That includes setting up the kitchen, hiring, training, and initial inventory.