Abstract:

The Covid-19 pandemic and the quarantine measures associated with it significantly increased demand for the delivery of ready-made meals. This is a global trend, which is estimated to make the restaurant-to-home delivery market be worth of five hundred billion dollars by the year 2026 and to grow at an annual rate of more than 8 percent[1].

The companies who are currently in this business in Russia are “GrowFood”, “ChefMarket”, “Elementaree”, “LevelKitchen”, “justfood” and many others, but their activities are mainly concentrated in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. Still, developing such services in other regions is also desirable.  Based on the analysis of the market, the concept of “Tasty and Cheap” dark kitchen project was suggested. The chosen low-cost business model is “direct-to-consumer” (D2C), assuming no offline office and distributors, and no other attributes of the classical retail business. The other names for “dark kitchen” are “ghost kitchen”, “cloud kitchen”, “shadow kitchen”, “virtual kitchen”,  “delivery-only restaurant”. It assumes a professional cooking facility designed for the preparation of delivery-only meals and hence does not assume having a storefront or serving the customers in the physical location. 

[1] https://www.deliverect.com/en/blog/dark-kitchens/the-future-of-ghost-kitchens-efficiency-growth-expansion