Inside Dubai's booming "ghost kitchens"

(14 Mar 2021) LEAD IN:
The "ghost kitchen" concept is booming amid the pandemic, as restaurants are forced to close their doors and takeaway orders skyrocket.
Dubai-based "cloud kitchen" firm Kitopi says it doubled the number of restaurant partners it worked with last year, as businesses searched for new revenue streams.

STORY-LINE:
Sushi or biryani, pizza or wraps - it's all coming from the same bustling kitchen.
"Ghost kitchens" are food world phantoms and thousands of restaurants are experimenting with these virtual spinoffs.
The concept emerged to capitalize on the rising popularity of ordering in instead of dining out, and it's now taking off amid the pandemic.
The trend also speaks to the growing power of third-party delivery companies, such as Deliveroo and Uber Eats, which have transformed the way many find restaurants and raised expectations for speed and convenience.
UAE-based Kitopi takes the concept one step further - by doing all the cooking too.
Once a restaurant partner is onboard, its workers are trained up on all their dishes. They're prepared, packaged and delivered from one of the firm's 60 kitchens.
"Imagine you're a business in New York, and you want to expand to Dubai, you can just license your brand out to us, and in a matter of a few weeks, you're live in every single kitchen we're in, we're the ones actually cooking the food on your behalf," explains Kitopi CEO and co-founder Mohamad Ballout.
"It's really solving the problem of allowing restaurants to scale up in this new digital age."
And business is booming amid the pandemic. Ballout says the firm, which was founded in January 2018, doubled the number of restaurant partners it worked with last year.
It's operational in the UAE, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Last month, it launched a new service in Jeddah, and is looking to open five kitchens in the Saudi city before the end of this year.
In March last year, Kitopi also launched a new grocery vertical, which delivers food items and other essentials across Dubai.
"The restaurants who were a bit hesitant to work with a business model like ours, that has completely shifted during the pandemic, where they actually didn't have much options left, except to really find new ways to create a new revenue stream," says Ballout.
Pizza restaurant Papa John's turned to Kitopi during the pandemic.
Regional CEO Tapan Vaidya says over half their restaurants were forced to close, so they had to find other vehicles for growth.
"We had to keep the business going, Kitopi was the perfect foil in that they had kitchens readily available where we could walk into, setup our kitchen, train their staff in Papa John's standards, and start delivery," he says.
"We could start a business with Kitopi in less than a week, while if we were to build our own restaurants in new trade areas, it would take anything from three to six months."
Papa John's success with "ghost kitchens" pushed them to start their own. They built a new location in an industrial area where rent is cheaper.
CEO Vaidya says the time of families going out to restaurants is now almost a thing of the past, everything is moving towards delivery and eating at home.
"The pandemic has completely changed a number of things, you know, for example, people now order digitally, which was not the case earlier. From around 30 percent revenue incoming from digital platforms, today, we are about 60 percent, so it's a big shift," he says.

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