They haunted delivery apps in the pandemic. But do 'ghost kitchens' still serve new food businesses?
Nina Barango gets an inside look at where the sausage is made for CBC Ottawa’s Creator Network
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You've likely come across a few on food delivery apps like Uber Eats or SkipTheDishes. They're the food businesses that pop up sometimes seemingly overnight, offering delivery, takeout or catering services, but never the option to dine in.
Of course, they're not an entirely new phenomenon — so-called "ghost kitchens" gained in popularity during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.
But perhaps because hungry diners rarely step inside, small business consultant Nina Barango found that for a lot of curious foodies, herself included, they're still shrouded in mystery.
It wasn't until she interviewed a couple who works in one on her podcast The Business Mindset that she began to feed her curiosity on what motivates businesses to opt for this model, with both its ups and its downs.
"Depending on how you look at it, it could be a great opportunity or it could be like a money sucker," said Barango, who wanted to know more about how these startups are faring as the pandemic recedes and more people return to restaurants.
"I kind of wanted to take people [behind the scenes] and give them a raw, real perspective on what happens … in the food industry, especially with small businesses," she said.
She visited three food entrepreneurs at a west end Ottawa ghost kitchen, getting an inside look and documenting the experience in a video for CBC Ottawa's Creator Network called Food Futures.
WATCH | How 3 entrepreneurs are bringing their food dreams to life in an Ottawa ghost kitchen:
No half-baked concept
According to the couple behind Mills Kitchen, their business was born from a pandemic craving for Nigerian meat pies.
Because they didn't know anywhere locally to buy the pastry they love from home, Marilyn Azichoba and her husband Kennedy Anyanwu had to buy the ingredients and make it themselves from scratch. That led them to experiment with making more Nigerian dishes that they eventually started selling.
When they generated enough dough from online sales, they decided to expand the business. But they said dreams of opening a full-blown restaurant were still out of reach, so they rented out space in Cookhouse Community Kitchens on Boyd Street.
"We settled for a commercial kitchen of an independent space … because we wanted to curtail our overhead expenses and save cost as much as we can," Anyanwu explained.
Now, to prepare their meat pies and suya they have access to industrial freezers, convection ovens and storage space, which they share with eight other businesses.
Ottawa Public Health inspects each of the businesses within the shared space to ensure food safety regulations are being followed.
"You essentially just bring your food ingredients and you start cooking," explained Charles Moir, the building's owner, adding that because it takes away many of the big startup costs, the shared space can be a low-risk way for fledgling chefs or home cooks to get a taste of the restaurant business.
"[It's] kind of like the middle ground for a lot of people to be like, 'OK, I have access to all the big machines and all the industrial things that you need to meet demand and scale, but I'm not forking out tens of thousands of dollars every month to cover overhead,'" Barango said.
Delivery apps eat into profit
So far, it's been an ideal model, say Anyanwu and Azichoba, who moved into the space in February 2023 and built a customer base offering takeout through their website, third-party delivery apps and occasional walk-ins.
According to Nara Sok, who's been involved in a number of Ottawa restaurants and currently co-owns the sushi restaurant Tomo in the ByWard Market, those in-person customers are where the majority of the profit lies, especially as people are more willing to leave the house to eat now that the lockdowns have been lifted.
Sok started his first ghost kitchen, a delivery-only convenience store called Instasnacks, out of Tomo's basement in 2019.
Since then, he's opened up several other ghost kitchens across the city, some in warehouse spaces, others out of spaces shared with other restaurants.
But Sok says there are challenges with the model, including third-party delivery apps that eat into a chunk of the revenue.
"It makes the whole concept very hard to be profitable," he said. He recently moved his Dalhousie Street pho restaurant Parle out of a ghost kitchen and finds walk-ins now account for more than half the revenue of that business.
"The margins are pretty slim for a restaurant or any brand that's trying to do digital only," Sok said.
Still, he agrees that there's value in starting off in a shared space before making your next move.
"It's good to build your brand to start it off … but you're probably not going to get ahead [without your own storefront]," Sok said.
Parkins Idubor says he was taken aback by the cost of delivery apps when he launched his new food business earlier this year.
After looking into the costs of opening a bricks-and-mortar dine-in restaurant in Kanata, the owner of Mamma's Amala also decided to lease a shared space to make and sell his Nigerian flavours, including the amala dumpling he grew up with, out of the same ghost kitchen as Anyanwu and Azichoba.
He says he now relies almost exclusively on delivery apps for his orders.
"We got into third-party delivery because we cannot actually service the whole of Ottawa by ourselves," he explained.
But because of the cost, he hopes to attract more walk-in customers.
In a statement, Uber Eats said the cut they take from food businesses — starting at 20% for delivery orders and 10% for pickup — goes toward covering delivery and drivers' earnings, which would be expensive and inefficient for individual businesses to pay for. It also covers marketing, allowing new businesses to be discovered.
"The Uber Eats platform gives small businesses flexible options and transparent pricing to help grow their storefronts," said spokesperson Keerthana Rang. CBC Ottawa also reached out to SkipTheDishes, who did not respond.
For Starr Vanlier, whose business model doesn't rely on delivery apps, the shared space has more pros than cons.
The founder of Sugar Tarts Bakery is known for her butter tarts and other sweets, baked twice a week in the Boyd Street commercial kitchens and sold at farmers' markets and through catering.
Vanlier, who also works as a hairstylist, says when COVID shut down salons, her baking side hustle became a lifeline. For her, there's a real upside in being part of the communal space of the shared kitchen.
"I get to meet different people, I get to taste different foods. It's just a lovely place for me to come in," she said.
The takeaway
Despite the challenges of launching a new food business from a ghost kitchen, Moir believes the model has a future, even as pandemic eating habits fade.
He says the minimal startup risk explains why demand for his commercial kitchen space remains high, and he argues that businesses who establish a brand, consistently produce quality food and maintain the cleanliness of cooking facilities can find success, storefront or not.
"That's about all you can do … to have a chance," he said, though he adds he does see turnover.
"It's a tough industry," he admitted.
For Barango, the takeaway is that there's still hope for new food businesses looking to use ghost kitchens either as home base or as a stepping stone to launch their food dreams.
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