DoorDash Goes Rogue and Opens Shared Ghost Kitchen

We’ve all been there––really craving a certain restaurant’s food but that restaurant doesn’t deliver and we’re too lazy to leave the house. However, with DoorDash’s recent announcement, folks in the Bay Area can call themselves the lucky ones (or the lazy ones).

According to Nation’s Restaurant News (NRN), DoorDash launched a shared ghost kitchen in Silicon Valley for Bay Area brands who wish to expand their delivery reach, but don’t want to open a brick-and-mortar location.

A ghost kitchen, also known as a dark kitchen or a cloud kitchen, is a professional kitchen that is designed to serve delivery-only concepts or restaurants, with no storefronts or dining areas, according to The Spoon.

Located in Redwood City, California, the 5,000-square-foot facility will ‘ghost cook’ established local and national brands such as Nation’s Giant Hamburgers, Rooster & Rice, Humphry Slocombe and The Halal Guys, NRN reports.

“We’re thrilled to be partnering with DoorDash to open its first commissary kitchen in Redwood City,” Halah Guys operator Patrick Mock said in a statement to NRN.

Mock operates four Halal Guys franchises in the Bay Area and the new DoorDash ghost kitchen will allow the fast-casual restaurant to extend its delivery reach to seven new secondary markets in the region including Atherton, Belmont, Menlo Park, Palo Alto, Redwood City, San Carlos and Woodside.

DoorDash isn’t the only food-delivery app that’s taken innovation to a whole new level. For example, Uber just announced that is has entered the grocery delivery game, Grubhub launched its first virtual-only restaurant dubbed Health Tribes, and Google and Olo come out with their own digital ordering platform complete with voice-assistant capabilities.

The sky really is the limit with these food-delivery apps. Then again, maybe 2020 is the year of in-flight delivery.