Cloud kitchens were a saving grace for restaurants during the COVID-19 pandemic. They helped businesses operate in light of social distancing and stay-at-home mandates. Besides being a vital part of survival for restaurants during the pandemic, cloud kitchens also played a key role in attracting enthusiastic entrepreneurs who wanted to open their own restaurant business but could not afford the overhead costs of opening a full-scale restaurant with dine-in capabilities.
However, as scientists begin calling an end to the pandemic and customers begin returning to restaurants, it begs the question: If customers go back to dining in restaurants, who will be ordering from cloud kitchens? To put it simply, the question that many cloud kitchen operators want to ask is: can cloud kitchens survive this change?
The answer is simply: yes.
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the way we approached outdoor dining was already constantly changing, thanks to the rapid growth of the internet and technology that made it easier for customers to place online food orders, delivery orders, and third-party aggregator orders that allowed them to dine in the comfort of their homes or offices.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, it was an overnight change. We were all confined to our homes for the greater reminder of 2020 and all the way up until early 2022 as restrictions were slowly lifted and relaxed throughout the world. This time frame gave restaurants, customers, and technology enough time to catch up, and dining in restaurants as we know it went through a fundamental shift, along with the entire Food & Beverage industry.
The benefits of cloud kitchens do not just extend to making social distancing possible and cutting down on rent. To completely understand why cloud kitchens will continue to be a fixture in the restaurant industry, let’s take a look at the greatest benefits that cloud kitchens can offer restaurant owners and customers.
Advantages of cloud kitchens for restaurants
- Improved efficiency
When compared to other restaurant formats, cloud kitchens are a more effective setup. There is no need for a lot of staff, which cuts down on labor costs, and employees can focus on one thing: preparing great food for their customers.
While traditional restaurants have to deal with multiple business processes and often end up lagging during busy times, such incidents will not happen in cloud kitchens. As there is no table turnover for customers, delivery-only restaurants deliver more orders than a traditional dine-in restaurant. Speed and effectiveness are increased because the food is supplied directly to the customers from the kitchen.
Costs related to labor, rent, and maintenance can be brought down as the cloud kitchens are not customer facing and cloud kitchens can function efficiently with fewer staff, smaller kitchens which do not have to be located in popular areas, and essentially, no upkeep of a dining area like a traditional restaurant.
- Menu changes
The flexibility to continuously experiment with the menu is one of the many advantages offered by the cloud kitchen approach. This means that restaurants with cloud kitchens can easily adapt to new culinary trends and provide a wider variety of food alternatives without having to continuously print new menus. All it takes is a quick update on the POS for the changes to reflect to your customers in no time.
With no additional pressure from exorbitant rents or the need to simultaneously deliver on an in-service experience for customers, cloud kitchens are free to be inventive and test out new cuisines and menu items. Changing the menu will keep your restaurant interesting and attract new customers.
- Ease of expansion
Because it’s relatively easier to obtain permits and licenses for a cloud kitchen than it is to open a traditional restaurant, cloud kitchen models also help aspiring restaurateurs open and operate restaurants quicker and easier. Since the time and capital required for cloud kitchens is comparatively lower to traditional restaurants, cloud kitchens can expand as soon as a menu and kitchen setup is created. Restaurant owners can open as many cloud kitchens with different cuisines and continue to operate from the same kitchen.
Scalability for cloud kitchen businesses is greatly aided by shared cloud cooking facilities and operator-managed cloud kitchens. Such shared kitchen spaces make it easy for restaurants looking to grow their customers and expand into new markets and begin operations right away.
- Multi-brand services
Cloud kitchens can host multiple other restaurants or brands under one roof. As there is an absence in customer footfall, multiple restaurants and kitchens can share common utilities and ingredients. Cloud restaurants can turn their kitchen into a coworking space if they have extra space and infrastructure.
Cloud kitchens can also rent kitchen space from services rather than building their own infrastructure. Similar services handle security, maintenance, and cleaning while chefs and staff can concentrate on creating the best meals imaginable.
- Complete automation of operations
With cloud kitchens, there is essentially no requirement for a FOH staff. Add automation to the mix and cloud kitchens can become fully functional with just a handful of chefs and other BOH staff.
With a top-notch POS that comes integrated with a Kitchen Display System, Inventory Manager, Restaurant CRM, Loyalty Management and LIVE Dashboard, cloud kitchens provide massive benefits to restaurant owners and chefs to produce the most consistent and top quality menu items, while satisfying their customers’ needs.
Even if you have a different section of your restaurant that accepts dine-in and walk-in orders, automating with a POS software can easily separate orders based on whether it’s for your cloud kitchen or dine-in restaurant, and sends orders to predefined kitchen station with no requirement for manual intervention from your staff.
The Takeaway
We think that cloud kitchens are here to stay for the long run. Although managing a cloud kitchen can provide some issues for restaurateurs, the advantages clearly outweigh the drawbacks.
It’s safe to assume that this restaurant model will gain popularity as more and more individuals follow the cloud kitchen trend. For business owners who wish to open their own restaurant without having to pay rent or buy their own property, cloud kitchens are the ideal answer. We may anticipate seeing even more cutting-edge features and usefulness from these kitchens of the future as technology continues to develop.