Ghost restaurants are foodservice establishments that only offer take-out and delivery service. Sometimes called virtual restaurants or even cloud kitchens, these businesses don’t have locations customers can visit to place or pick up orders. Instead, customers place their food orders online, using an app or by telephone and once the food has been prepared, the restaurant delivers it the customers either using their delivery drivers or third-party delivery services.
Growing in Popularity
Ghost restaurants enable people to enjoy tasty, nutritious, professionally prepared meals without leaving their homes or workplaces. A growing number of people who can’t or don’t want to cook the special dishes they want to are turning to this type of restaurant more and more. Ghost restaurants have gone from serving a small niche market to being foodservice establishments millions of people depend on every day for their meals.
Tips for Opening Successful Ghost Restaurants
There are several things people can do to increase the odds their ghost restaurants will be successful. The following are 5 tips that can help this type of restaurant to do well:
- Provide Nutritious, Delicious, Unique, Dishes
- Allow People to Customize Their Meal Choices
- Make Sure the Meals Look and Smell Great
- Deliver the Food in A Timely Manner
- Encourage Feedback to Improve Customer Satisfaction
If you focus on mastering these things, word of mouth from satisfied customers will reduce your need to spend a great deal of money on marketing and dramatically increase your customer base.
1. Provide Nutritious, Delicious, Unique, Dishes
For ghost restaurants to be successful, the dishes they provide must meet the need of customers in a number of ways. First, the dishes must be nutrient rich. A growing number of Americans are health conscious and want meals that provide the nutrients they need to maintain good health. The meals must also be so delicious people will want to eat them every day. Plus, the ghost restaurant’s dishes should be so unique that if people want it, they have to contact your foodservice establishment to get it.
An Essential Combination
This combination of elements gives potential customers a variety of compelling reasons to turn to your ghost restaurant again and again. For most people, good meals provide more than just sustenance. They are an enjoyable culinary experience that makes their taste buds sing and engages and excites all of their senses. Ghost restaurants with dishes that do this increase their chances for success.
2. Allow People to Customize Their Meal Choices
People love having tasty, diverse, options they can use to customize their meals. Even the most attractive, tastiest, dishes can become boring if they are prepared using the same ingredients every time. Offering people diverse options for customizing the meals they order can help ghost restaurants entice and satisfy their customers and keep them coming back. It can be something as simple as having the ability to add exotic spices or different meats or vegetables to the meal. Plus, offering different preparation options like baking, steam frying or sautéing can also help.
One Meal Type Doesn’t Fit All Customers
Being able to satisfy customers’ unique, diverse, dietary needs also helps. Having a menu that contains vegetarian dishes, gluten-free choices or dishes with no dairy products, can make ghost restaurants attractive to a wider market. Plus, offering options like free-range chicken and beef, wild-caught fish or seasonal produce grown by local farmers, can draw in and satisfy niche markets and give regular customers unique and healthy dietary option they can try. This helps make the ghost restaurant’s dining experience more interesting and makes people order again and again.
3. Make Sure the Meals Look and Smell Great
Offering meals that stimulate several of the customer’s senses is another tip for building successful ghost restaurants. Meal that are pleasing to look at and smell and tastes good can make ghost restaurants the talk of the town, create interest in and excitement about their food and increase their customer base. Seeing a family member, friend or co-worker eating a meal that looks gorgeous and smells fantastic can make people’s mouths water. This can pique their interest enough for them to order some for themselves.
Presentation Matters
When dishes and meals are presented in unique and attractive ways, they can grab the attention of potential customer and make them want to know what the food tastes like. Making sure dishes and meals are colorful, presented in unique and attractive ways and smell great is a very effective form of advertising. Even the configuration and appearance of the take-out container can be a marketing element that helps to attract new customers. The way meals from ghost restaurants are presented can enhance consumers’ overall enjoyment of the dining experience and make them return time and again.
4.Deliver the Food In A Timely Manner
No matter how good your food looks, smell, tastes and is for customers, if it’s not delivered in a timely manner, it ruins the customer experience. Whether they are at home, at work or meeting with friends, people only have a finite amount of time to eat their meals. People opening ghost restaurants must be sure to put fast, reliable, delivery systems in place. Customers need to know the food they order will be there when they want it. Few things can ruin a ghost restaurant’s reputation faster than food that’s delivered later than promised or expected.
Fast, Timely, Food Delivery
A great way to impress current customers and attract new ones is to provide fast, timely, food delivery. Whether that means limiting your service area during certain hours or using a combination of in-house and third-party delivery services, ghost restaurants must do whatever is necessary to ensure people’s food orders get to them on time.
Guaranteeing food orders will be delivered within a certain time frame is a powerful marketing tool. It can make it easier for new ghost restaurants to separate themselves from the competition in what is now a very competitive market.
5.Encourage Feedback to Improve Customer Satisfaction
Savvy business owners know that getting regular feedback from customers and making adjusting based on it, is a key to long-term success. Creating systems that encourage and facilitate feedback from customers is very important.
Soliciting customer comments on receipts and social media and making reasonable changes based on the feedback is a great way to improve customer satisfaction and build a lasting relationship with your customer base. Customers should be encouraged to tell the person taking their order or post a comment on the restaurant’s social media pages about changes that can make their customer experience even better.
Open Lines of Communication
Taking the time to respond to customer comments and make some of the changes they suggest, if they are reasonable and doable, let’s your customers know you value and are responsive to their comments. This helps to establish open lines of communication ghost restaurants can use improve customer satisfaction. Social media is an effective, inexpensive, marketing tool ghost restaurants can use to communicate with current customers and recruit new ones. Making it clear that satisfying your customers is important is a great way to keep the customers you have and attract new ones.
A Lucrative Investment
If you do your due diligence, properly assess the demand for a ghost restaurant offering the type of food in which you specialize, ensure you can provide tasty, nutritious, unique dishes and deliver them in a timely manner, a ghost restaurant can be a lucrative investment.
