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Several new companies and models have emerged to help restaurants by making food off-site, and even delivering it.
Since the pandemic began, many restaurants have pivoted to providing takeout and delivery. It’s a move that shows no signs of diminishing, even as they reopen for dining in one form or another. To accommodate this increased demand, they are depending more and more on various types of off-premises kitchens.
“I think it will continue,” said Daniel Boulud, the high-end chef and restaurateur who occasionally delivered special-occasion meals but has now established a new regular delivery service for his restaurants.
Several companies are counting on it. Their inventory is so-called ghost kitchens — off-site meal-preparation facilities that are untethered from physical restaurants. They predate the virus, but are multiplying now, and taking many new forms.
Ghost kitchens allow restaurants to outsource the making of their takeout and delivery meals, without cannibalizing the stoves, walk-ins and prep areas needed to serve seated diners outdoors or in. With national reach, they’re also promising to expand a restaurant’s footprint and brand recognition beyond the immediate neighborhood.
Reef Kitchens is one of these. It was started in June 2019 in Miami, using parking lots and garages. Today it has some 4,500 parking sites across the country where it is installing mobile pods — roughly the size of shipping containers — that it calls kitchen vessels. The same space might house cooks preparing delivery orders from several restaurants, whether the food is Indian, Mexican, Italian or burgers.
Reef has three modular kitchens up and running in New York City. It expects to more than double that by the end of the year, and hopes to get its nationwide total to 300.
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