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In the ghost kitchens, or cloud kitchens that they are usually called, there’s no host to welcome the diners, no seating availability, and zero customer-facing space. What a cloud kitchen platform has are some tablets for taking orders and a pick-up window for the delivery drivers.

Imagine having a restaurant in a kitchen where you share the space with companies like McDonalds, KFC , etc. The delivery person comes and collects your order to take it to the customers at their location. Here you won’t have to worry about the restaurant setting up costs, hiring staff to take care of the guests, and choosing the right ambience to get the most Instagram likes. All you will have to focus on is your food and its marketing. This answers what a cloud kitchen is.

Now, cloud kitchens tend to take many forms as you must have seen in the case of C3, Kitchen United, or Kitopi Kitchen. So later in the article, we will be diving into the different operating models that come within the ghost kitchen platform ecosystem, explaining how does cloud kitchen work. But before we get to that stage, let us peek into the market that this food delivery model comes with. 

Since 2016, the delivery has been the fastest-growing space in the restaurant sector. Before COVID-19 hit us, more than half of Americans were ordering food delivery almost once a week. But the pandemic led to a space where restaurant owners had to relook at their operations and decide on a model that would get them maximum profit at low management cost. Around the same time, cloud kitchen platforms became a thing. 

As you must have guessed, there is an abundance of fame and money in the cloud kitchen space, something which can be expected to grow. 

Who are the top cloud kitchen providers?

Believe me when I tell you this. There are millions of cloud kitchen platforms in the world. In the US alone, there are hundreds of them. However, the good thing is that a majority of them are hosted on these top ghost kitchen providers – 

Out of these cloud kitchen providers, the one we are going to be basing our focus on today is Kitopi Kitchen. The platform, which in July 2021, raised $415 million from investors , including SoftBank Group Corp.’s Vision Fund 2, before achieving its unicorn status.

One of the most popular cloud kitchens in Dubai, Kitopi connects with restaurants that need to deliver their food online. Established in 2018, they enable restaurants to work out of different locations without making any infrastructure and software investments. 

What is special about Kitopi kitchen is that they help restaurants make a great customer experience through a platform where orders are received, delivery is managed, and customer reviews are handled.

Now, understanding how one of the most popular food delivery business ideas in Dubai works will bring you closer to understanding how to start a cloud kitchen of your own. 

Here’s how the Kitopi kitchen platform works. 

Now that we have looked into what is a cloud kitchen and how does cloud kitchen works in the context of Kitopi, let’s get down to the part where we help you enter the space.

There are multiple aspects of starting a cloud kitchen. For ease of digestion, we have divided those into three parts – Choosing a model, operational considerations, technical requirements. Let’s start from the first. 

This is the most popular cloud kitchen model where a single concept is followed, and one or two food options are provided. For example, think of a pizza joint where the menu is anywhere between ten to fifteen items. 

A cloud restaurant is usually a brand that works inside a restaurant. Here, the infrastructure of an existing restaurant is used for offering a range of food menus. These kitchens are typically listed on third-party food aggregators like UberEats under different brand names.

It is a model where there are individual kitchen units for every brand – all operating out of one kitchen space. These kitchens are very large in size, with ample space for multiple restaurants to rent out and expand their business. 

This is typically an extension of a coworking cloud kitchen system. The main purpose here is to give an infrastructure to the restaurants that need to make food for delivery-only. Here, there is a huge reliance on food aggregators to handle the delivery operations. 

Usually, the cloud kitchen cost varies, depending on the model you choose. Here’s what the approximate valuation looks like – 

While it is true that the cloud kitchen does not need a high-end location and space to match the vibes owners are aiming to match, it should be closer to the target group. Since the essence of ghost kitchen lies in making deliveries faster, it is essential that they are near the deliverable areas.

The best thing about them is that cloud kitchens can be set up in residential areas, unused parking lots, and even movable food trucks. 

Unlike generally assumed, licenses are an important part of the cloud kitchen ecosystem. Since the customers cannot personally visit the outlet to see the food safety, hygiene, etc., it helps to get certifications and licenses, which give confidence in your food quality. 

The equipment you use will depend entirely on the food you want to prepare. The more complex and wide you keep the menu, the more extensive the list of equipment will be. To start off, you can only invest in a fridge, stove, oven, counters, and cooking utensils.

The next part you will have to consider is the packaging. This, you will have to pay a key attention to as irrespective of how good the food is, bad packaging can ruin the customer experience. 

Since the cloud kitchen is usually the backend of the restaurant system, you will only majorly need the cooking and cleaning staff. A team that knows how to cook food while ensuring complete hygiene will be enough to get you started in the restaurant business. 

A POS system that would gather orders from multiple aggregators is possibly the biggest restaurant feature needed for a cloud kitchen. The integrated POS system would take in orders from multiple sources while maintaining real-time records. This way, you will be able to analyze which platform is working best for your business and eventually how to take that traffic to your own software.

When you partner with a third-party aggregator to host your menu and manage deliveries, you end up paying them 12% to 18% for online orders while 18-25% for deliveries. Now, while the visibility they can get you is unquestionable, it would be equally crucial to have your own online order software – a web app or mobile application . This software can be linked with your POS and KDS to ensure a holistic in-restaurant experience. 

This is for businesses that receive phone orders. If you are one of them, you would need an integrated call center system in place. The POS-based call center system would help in streamlining the telephone orders, especially when you have multiple outlets. By digitalizing the system, you will also be able to see customers information and order history to prevent making repeat or incorrect orders.

Food preparation in the case of cloud kitchens typically takes some 15-20 minutes. Here, using a kitchen display system comes in very handy when optimizing the order processing time. How? The order gets updated in the KDS when it is received; from there the staff can view, prepare, and plan order delivery accordingly.

This doesn’t just make operation smooth but also helps identify delays and loopholes in the process.

When it comes to food delivery in a cloud kitchen, you have two options: either take control of the delivery in-house or partner with a third-party aggregator. While the former makes the delivery convenient, it comes with management and hiring cost complexity. In case of the latter, you can easily assign orders to the nearby delivery person by using a food delivery system.

For any restaurant business, managing inventory is crucial. A robust inventory management software would enable tracking of daily inventory usage while giving you insights into when to restock items. This, in turn, will help lower wastage costs.

Another aspect of understanding how to start a cloud kitchen business would be to know the mistakes to avoid. While there could be multiple, this video summarizes the top issues you should look out for – 

So here are the different aspects of what is a cloud kitchen, what you need to know about the Kitopi platform, and how to build a cloud kitchen platform of your own. The only thing that remains is gathering an understanding of how much do cloud kitchens cost. Let’s look into that next as we conclude the piece. 

[Also Read: Cloud Computing – An Ultimate Guide for Businesses]

The answer to what can be the Kitopi-like cloud kitchen cost will depend entirely on the features you want to be added there – both for your management and for the ease of the restaurants you are partnering with. Typically, the cost of building a restaurant app on the cloud kitchen platform model like Kitopi, which consists of both an app and website, will cost you around AED 60k to AED 80k. 

This range also depends heavily on the solution provider you partner with. When you invest your time and money in a cloud computing services company like Appinventiv, you know that they have experience in building cloud kitchen apps, know what mistakes should be avoided, and have the technical expertise to scale your brand, you know you are built to succeed. 

We hope that everything we covered in the article would be enough to get you started on your aspirations to become a cloud kitchen owner with utmost confidence. There’s only one thing left to do now. Get in touch with the Appinventiv team of restaurant app engineers and initiate your journey. 

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