You can thank delivery giants like Uber Eats and Doordash for that. Now, more than ever, restaurants try to offer a delivery service because it’s just so convenient. This has also resulted in a job increase for delivery drivers. And some people even take food delivery as a side hustle!
The development of these on-demand services has grown and restaurants need to adapt to the new needs of their customers. Remember that during the pandemic, food delivery was such a blessing.
But this trend has benefited restaurants as well as it benefited us. Not only were businesses in the restaurant industry able to survive the temporary lockdowns by delivering food conveniently but they have also seen an increased number of orders.
Think about all the times when you wouldn’t have eaten at a restaurant but because it was so easy to just order something in 1 minute you decided to grab that pizza and continue watching that movie. Netflix and Chill and Delivery apps represent an inevitable combination nowadays!
Going to a restaurant is not seen as a special experience anymore. Or maybe it is, even more so, because it happens more rarely than ever before! But we have to mention the pickle that physical restaurants find themselves in. Some of them choose not to deliver - as to remain true to their principles and keep bringing people to the restaurant’s physical location.
This isn’t a great strategy in the long run as restaurants must offer some kind of time-saving option to enjoy food. If not, they won’t be able to compete with the speed and convenience of others that collaborate with delivery services.
But we agree - there are still restaurants that are well established and have a name and a customer base in place. Especially higher-class restaurants. But for the smaller actors in the industry, if you can offer your products on an online delivery app - you probably should.
Look. Most people eat from places they trust or places that have favorable reviews - thank you Google for those. But all of these food delivery apps have opened the chance for a new concept for food producers to offer options to customers.
These so-called dark or ghost kitchens are referring to entities we can find on an app, but do not have a physical place set up for us to enjoy a meal. They can only sell their food on an app - and to say they have success is an understatement. In fact, the market for ghost kitchens is expected to reach the $500 billion mark in the next 3 years. That’s a 4-time increase compared to pre-pandemic levels.
Most of the time such services offer food at cheaper prices because of the reduced costs associated with not having a physical restaurant in place. And customers like that. Even more so, everyone likes discounts, and dark kitchens are the ones capable of offering some of the most attractive ones. Their only way of selling is usually through a third-party application, so having an appealing price and a killer brand image is mandatory for being successful.
And there is no rigidity associated with the concept of dark kitchens. In reality, flexibility can better describe the whole process. If someone doesn’t hit the mark with a certain menu or online brand image, they can just change everything and go for it again.
In this way, new small players in the food industry get the chance to compete with the big boys! It would have been so much harder, if not impossible, otherwise.
Most restaurants have adopted the concept of dark kitchens to survive during the pandemic. And all of this wouldn’t have been possible without the food delivery apps that we so eagerly use. So with Venture Capital firms and entrepreneurs investing so much in the development of this new way of producing on-demand food, it is safe to say that the industry will continue to be influenced massively in the next couple of years by the numerous delivery apps available worldwide.
