Story at a glance
- Prominent burger chain Five Guys has opened its first ghost kitchen, which operates only for cooks preparing food for delivery.
- The coronavirus pandemic has heightened the need for restaurants to find ways to cut costs.
- Ghost kitchens effectively slash real estate and staff costs while upping a store’s delivery capacity.
Prominent burger chain Five Guys has opened its first ghost kitchen, which operates only for cooks preparing food for delivery.
The new Garland, Texas, location is only available to customers ordering pick-up or using a third-party delivery service like Grubhub or Uber Eats, Business Insider reported. Encore Restaurants, Five Guys’s largest U.S. franchisee, manages the operation.
The new kitchen, which is the first in the U.S., brings the Encore’s store count to 109, Restaurant Dive reported. The press release did not mention whether it plans to open international ghost kitchens, according to the outlet.
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The coronavirus pandemic has heightened the need for restaurants to find ways to cut costs. Ghost kitchens effectively slash real estate and staff costs while upping the store’s delivery capacity, according to Business Insider.
Delivery makes up nearly 9 percent of all restaurant orders, according to market research firm NPD Group. This is a 154-percent increase from 2020.
Five Guys’s new ghost kitchen is “optimized for delivery with all the technology needed to keep food and labor costs down, maximize profit, and ensure high-quality delivery orders,” Encore’s divisional vice-president of operations said in a statement shared with Business Insider. Encore President Dale Doerhoff said he “is confident the location will be a success.”
Other popular chains, including Wendy’s, Burger King and Kroger have ghost kitchens. Chipotle opened its first ghost kitchen in November in New York.
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