With the introduction of food delivery services such as DoorDash and Grubhub, consumers have changed their expectations of delivery. No longer is it only pizza or Chinese food arriving to your front door; you can order dishes from restaurants across town — with or without the restaurant’s consent to have their food delivered. Following the state-wide restaurant shut down, however, restaurants have also shifted focus to takeout and delivery. In many cases, restaurants are delivering food themselves, cutting out the costs of a third-party delivery service.

A ghost kitchen is a kitchen with no front-of-house staff or dining room. The restaurant’s presence is mainly virtual, either providing delivery itself or using the visibility of food delivery apps to sell their product. Few restaurants in Charlotte are set up to serve food that travels well. That’s changing now, as owners look to maintain some revenue by selling food to go.

Chris Coleman, executive chef at The Goodyear House, says he and the restaurant’s leadership have been discussing running ghost kitchens out of The Goodyear House. By creating multiple concepts with different menus and branding offered online, they could cover diners looking for different cuisines as they scroll through delivery sites.

“I think if we were to do something different, chicken makes the most sense for us — either a kind of old school, like by the bucket or by the piece kind of thing, or a chicken strips concept.” Coleman says.

Though they haven’t decided on anything yet, The Goodyear House would also continue serving its menu items as well. The restaurant recently stopped serving delivery and takeout to give staff a break and focus on how they want to move forward during the shutdown, whether it’s as The Goodyear House alone or adding in a ghost concept.

“I think if we want to do it, it would be something simple — five or six menu items that can be pumped out pretty easily with little overhead,” he says.

Jeff Tonidandel, who owns Haberdish, Growler’s Pourhouse, and Crepe Cellar with his wife Jamie Brown, believes once the shut down passes, there will be a lot of opportunity for those looking to open a ghost kitchen. With another restaurant on the way, he’s been considering the idea of a commissary kitchen that makes some regular products for the kitchens, as well as acts as a place to do research and development.

“It’s really hard to get the kind of R&D done that we want to get done during service and while we’re working,” Tonidandel says. “It would be a little more focused if we could have a place to do that, but it’s really expensive to do that and not worth the investment.”

If the space could become a ghost kitchen in the evenings, however, that would offset that investment. The ideal space, Tonidandel says, would be a chain restaurant right near the highway in a neighborhood with low rent. That way, you can still serve affluent diners without paying to be in a high-rent area. Coming out of the coronavirus outbreak, Tonidandel believes spaces like this will be easy to come by — and his restaurant team will be well versed in food to go.

“We’re definitely getting a lot more practice at these types of things, we’re getting more comfortable with it,” he says. “So, yeah, it’s definitely a thought.” —Kristen Wile

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