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Comment by kippinitreal | Hacker News Reader

I’m pretty bullish on this concept finding market fit, probably less confident about the business model being great. The super interesting feature IMO is how much this lowers the cost to enter the market. I imagine this are super short term leases (maybe...per shift?), no need for POS, simple bulk ordering etc. shifting capex to opex for small businesses will open up the market to a lot of new entrants. I think a comparison to AWS is fair here.

On the financial side, it sort of seems like a race to the bottom for the landlords. I don’t think they’ll have anything like the lock-in AWS has and given how significant the expense will be I would imagine teams being pretty willing to jump for a small savings (which goes to straight to the bottom line). IMO this would be a great move by one of the apps to own, as controlling distribution would lock tenants in.

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I'm bullish on the concept and business model from an investment standpoint, I think they are likely going to become very successful, but as a consumer I can't say I'm looking forward to delivery platforms being flooded with these "cloud kitchens".

It seems to be designed to enable mediocre restaurants to "pivot" at a moment's notice and rebrand themselves after building up a well-deserved crappy reputation, ready to start anew and fool more unsuspecting consumers. On the other side of the coin, well-loved restaurants could disappear at a moments notice because the owner/chef got tired of making the same type of cuisine and want to experiment with something new or more lucrative/trendy.

I think the agility this model offers restaurants is both a blessing and a curse in this sense, as with traditional restaurants the physical presence involved makes the brand more enduring, for better or worse.

>> well-loved restaurants could disappear at a moments notice because the owner/chef got tired of making the same type of cuisine and want to experiment with something new

So let's say you're such an owner. Just sell your business, and start something new.

But this could make things really interesting: What if you could order any meal you read about on the web, from anywhere ?

It's not possible for every dish, for the lack of local ingredients. But maybe it's possible for many dishes ?

A robotic ingredient picker could be really useful in that context. Make a large kitchen with a ton of ingredients. When an order comes up, a robot picker automatically brings the sauce ingredients to the saucier, the sautee ingredients to the sautee station, etc...

> n the other side of the coin, well-loved restaurants could disappear at a moments notice because the owner/chef got tired of making the same type of cuisine and want to experiment with something new or more lucrative/trendy.

If you watch the restaurants that are successful, you will notice it does not happen. It may spell "the owner/chef got tired of making the same type of cuisine" but it reads "the owner/chef was not making enough money"

Aggregating many restaurateurs at a single kitchen, and encouraging families to order from that kitchen, a bundle of meals, could save significant money on delivery.

And landlords could also offer their own delivery app, for more savings.

For a restaurant brand owner, leaving that kitchen means leaving those bundles and customers. And replacing him(for many customers), is a possibility.

That's one way landlords could gain some lock-in.

Also, even without significant lock-in, landlords that may have many kitchens, could have significant purchasing power of food ingredients. Even if they earn only a single digit percentage on that, food ingredients have rapid turnover, so yearly ROIC is significant.

+1 I think this is the infra revolution we need.

It makes sense but I don't see the benefit of Deliveroo type companies operating them. Better results would come out of a more organic approach.

It would be a great way to diversify the offerings for people who want to start a small restaurant.

A lot of cities don't have certain types of cuisines. This could be an option for a new immigrant to introduce their food to a new market.

And for those who see a bigger picture, renting these ghost kitchens to new immigrants on a Kitchen-as-a-Service model.

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