How Deliveroo's 'dark kitchens' are catering from car parks

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/oct/28/deliveroo-dark-kitchens-pop-up-feeding-the-city-london

by Hates_ • 9 years ago

69 70 9 years ago

timthelion4• 9 years ago

How dystopian. Its ironic, how as technology improves, things often get worse, because the cheapest, worse, solution becomes too cheep, and reasonable solutions cannot compete. It is no harder for us, today, to install windows in prefab buildings, than it was 10 years ago, but the windowless shipping container has gotten so cheep, that the window becomes a considerable cost. It is like how 30 years ago, most businesses had a telephone line and was easy to contact but today, the idea of having an actual telephone line and secretaries to answer the phone seems "too expensive". It wasn't any cheaper back then though.

icebraining2• 9 years ago

I'm curious, do restaurant kitchens usually have exterior windows? My mental image of them (surely mostly from TV) is not of a place with plenty of natural light.

jjeaff• 9 years ago

I've watched a lot of Food TV and I can't recall ever seeing windows in any professional kitchen.

astura• 9 years ago

I worked in an industrial kitchen and there was no windows. There was a loading dock that was closed unless it was in use.

mseebach2• 9 years ago

How dystopian

You're objecting to an aesthetic, not frankly anything of substance. Very few restaurant kitchens are particularly pleasant places to work, often cramped (because they take up square feet in prime real estate) and very hot. Three staff in a container seems comparatively spacious.

Also, when The Guardian struggles to find other fault than temperature and lack of appropriate council permits, that's about as strong a confirmation of adequate working conditions you're likely to find.

timthelion4• 9 years ago

Oh, if the work conditions are usually terrible than I guess it's fine.

tolien4• 9 years ago

A related article [1] suggests there's "room for six or seven chefs" which sounds like a rather more cramped setup than three. One wonders, given they don't seem to have bothered with planning permission, whether any consideration's been given to fire safety either.

1: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/oct/08/deliveroo-b...

skewart2• 9 years ago

How dystopian.

What exactly seems dystopian?

The author sure was trying hard to dramatize these micro kitchens, describing them in commically over-the-top ways - "dark kitchens" near highway overpasses evokes thoughts of secret interrogation sites. But what actual, tangible aspects of these kitchens seems dystopian or bad?

Overall they seem like a great trend. Small-scale infill development can reduce traffic and pollution while also creating a better experience for restaurant customers - more food available with faster delivery times.

It does sound like in at least one case planning regulations were not being accurately followed. That's not good. And maybe some kitchen environments weren't very good. Individual restaurants violating labor laws should be punished, and/or regulations should be updated if there are special considerations needed for these micro-kitchens. (The lack of windows though is probably because they need to use wall space for storage and equipment and not a way to save money; it's also not necessarily a big deal in a small building if you can leave the door open.)

At the end of the day I'm just not seeing how urban infill micro-kitchens are a terrible dystopian trend.

a3n• 9 years ago

what actual, tangible aspects of these kitchens seems dystopian or bad?

Car exhaust floating in to the kitchen through the open doors.

If you've ever lived in an apartment with a balcony near a freeway, you'll know why I'd never eat food prepared in that environment.

woolvalley• 9 years ago

Have you worked in a fast food kitchen? Or any restaurant kitchen? It's windowless and greasy and often surrounded by a parking lot close to a busy road.

I also had classes as a child in buildings called 'portables' which look pretty similar to these things, except with windows and a normal classroom interior.

spunker540• 9 years ago

I'm not surprised that as food delivery services gain popularity, restauranteurs are starting to realize that you can save a lot of money on rent and facilities, if you focus on a delivery-only model. Here in the US it's still mostly traditional restaurants doing delivery through seamless, grubhub, uber eats etc. but I'm sure this model is right around the corner.

Out of curiosity a while ago I tried looking into what it takes to be a seamless vendor and it seemed like they were mostly expecting established brick and mortar restaurants to sign up, rather than enterprising new ventures that exclusively sell through them.

mseebach2• 9 years ago

Online delivery supermarkets have made the same realisation (so-called dark stores), but a few years earlier.

majormajor• 9 years ago

Feels like New York, where space has long been at an extreme premium, figured this out a long time ago with take out and delivery joints.

tdeck• 9 years ago

Counterpoint: all the delivery services around me that prepared their own food (spoonrocket, bento, spring) seem to have gone out of business. Munchery is still around but I hear it's gone way downhill, and they don't deliver hot food anyway.

the_mitsuhiko2• 9 years ago

When I was living in Lindon I regularly ordered from hungryhouse. On my way home from work I always walked past a sleezy place which sells asian food, had never any people in and the house looked really badly maintained. Only after a few orders and walking past this place I realize I ordered from them a few times.

After seeing the place and making the connection I never ordered again from there.

It definitely made me realize that I pick food differently for delivery than I do eating out.

gaadd33• 9 years ago

There's a few places that specialize in that sort of thing: https://www.fastcompany.com/3064075/hold-the-storefront-how-...

thisisit3• 9 years ago

This making me a bit nauseous. Two things come to mind. Can Deliveroo and the restaurants do things like this? Restaurants need to go through a food safety agency before they open followed by regular checks. What kind of checks or regulatory frames do these "Rooboxes" fall in? Is it another case of ignorance of the law in name of tech disruption? The whole "fake it till you make it".

I maybe wrong but isn't this kind of lying to the customers? While people are expecting "Takeaway Delivery from Premium Restaurants", as Deliveroo puts it, what they are getting is something from a place which isn't really the restaurant. Sure people have been trained but is it really the same?

zootboy• 9 years ago

From the article:

Dan Warne, Deliveroo’s UK and Ireland managing director, admits the company did not move quickly enough to speak to the council and residents in Southwark, but says Roobox kitchens are clean, hygienic and checked by the Food Standards Agency.

tolien4• 9 years ago

To be fair, "checked by the FSA" isn't worth much - they also missed the Two Sisters chicken relabelling "scandal" [1] (not that they could reasonably be expected to observe that they met standards 24/7 anyway).

1: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/sep/29/food-regula...

DanBC4• 9 years ago

For food safety from restaurants I think of the "scores on the doors" scheme. FSA doesn't do the checking for that scheme. The local authority do the checks. The FSA hold the results.

http://ratings.food.gov.uk/

I can't find results for any of the rooboxes, but maybe I'm not searching properly.

I really hope they're talking about this scheme, and that all the rooboxes have been checked.

thisisit3• 9 years ago

That sounds like bullshit. Bureaucracy moves very slowly and should have given them enough time to cover all their bases - residents and council as well.

To cross check their claims. Below search on http://ratings.food.gov.uk returns only three Roobox. It doesn't show Roobox for Cocotte, Crust Bros etc. mentioned in the article. So one has to wonder how true is their claim.

sorokod2• 9 years ago

I think that this is a close you can get to lying to the customers without actually lying.

frakkingcylons3• 9 years ago

So they're cooking food in a metal box in a parking lot. I don't see the issue. People seem to like food trucks just fine and the only difference is wheels and an engine.

DanBC4• 9 years ago

and the only difference is wheels and an engine.

and planning permission, and hygiene inspection.

djrogers• 9 years ago

Food trucks don't get 'planning permission' and these boxes do get food safety inspections, so again - doesn't seem any worse to me.

frakkingcylons3• 9 years ago

Hygiene inspection is still being carried out. From the article:

“Dan Warne, Deliveroo’s UK and Ireland managing director, admits the company did not move quickly enough to speak to the council and residents in Southwark, but says Roobox kitchens are clean, hygienic and checked by the Food Standards Agency.”

sorokod2• 9 years ago

That is fine as long as people know that the food they ordered was cooked in a parking lot or similar and not in an upscale restaurant.

Symbiote• 9 years ago

I think the issue is the general race to the bottom in working conditions. People don't necessarily want to support a business that keeps the staff in too hot / cold metal boxes all evening. It's certainly not what they expect from a nice restaurant.

frakkingcylons3• 9 years ago

That's a good point.

cm21872• 9 years ago

I made the mistake to order from one of those, the food was just disgusting. There are 5 or 6 fake restaurants like those appearing in the list, all with the same post code. It taught me the habit of checking the postcode and google street view before ordering from any new restaurant on Deliveroo.

icebraining2• 9 years ago

According to the Daily Mail (which, granted...) those listings say they're "Deliveroo Editions". I couldn't find an example on the site, though.

cm21872• 9 years ago

I can still see them, here is two:

https://deliveroo.co.uk/menu/london/blackwall/dirty-bones-bl...

https://deliveroo.co.uk/menu/london/blackwall/la-pistola

They are now flagged as "editions" but they weren't when I last tried one.

barrkel• 9 years ago

The dark kitchen setup isn't just for delivery; I was wandering down a lane alongside one of London's many railways one evening and got chatting to a chap that was having a smoke. A number of the archways housed separate little kitchens, some of them cooking for delivery, but others preparing food that would later be composed at high end restaurants. It sounded like things that take a lot of preparation or cooking are sometimes done centrally and shipped out in time for the main evening meals.

Balgair• 9 years ago

My old super in LA did this for a while too, before becoming a super. Much of the high-end 'catering' is done in apartments all over LA. I liked him a lot, but never asked about what the health inspector thought of the 3 cats.

johnchristopher• 9 years ago

Straight out from `Virtual Light`.

moomin• 9 years ago

I live near Il Mirto (mentioned in the article). a) It’s in East Dulwich, not Dulwich b) it does Italian Italian food, not British or American Italian food c) its branding and presentation leaves something to be desired. I can see why Deliveroo constitutes a problem for them: the big brands and solid presentation are going to win.

fragmede• 9 years ago

This is merely the logical extension of app-centralization of food delivery - if Deliveroo is the brand that I'm buying from, and not an actual Indian/Thai/whatever restaurant with a name I trust and recognize, then Deliveroo might as well operate the kitchen part as well.

The interesting part, to me, is going to be is if the other half of the restaurant experience - the dining area manages to become a thing - sometimes I want takeout so I can eat in the comfort of my own home, but sometimes I actually want to eat out. Is there a new business model enabled by this, for a fancy restaurant with no kitchen? Order whatever food you wanted to the place, they would take it, plate it as only a fancy restaurant can do, and then serve it to you with the appropriate flourishes, on a table with cloth tablecloth and fancy silverware. Finally, they would take away the dishes (and clean them), but without the cheapness of eating out of cardboard boxes.

psadri• 9 years ago

From what I have heard from restaurateur friends - it's very difficult to have high quality food that was not prepared immediately before serving. So it is not as simple as plating it.

philfrasty• 9 years ago

I want to better understand the value-proposition / niche of services like Deliveroo compared to classical online food-delivery companies.

If I wanted to order food online for the last 10 years I could simply order through various services that connected me to local restaurants.

- First question: why is there a niche for services like Deliveroo at all? If a local restaurant does not offer delivery there are hundreds of other restaurants that do. I am completely indifferent in choosing one.

- Second question: it seems the value of Deliveroo is in (?) building the infrastructure to deliver the food rather than restaurants themselves. This seems much easier to do for existing platforms that already have signed up all the local restaurants and build this on top to aggregate all restaurants.

What is the scenario here? $900 Mio. [1] in funding sure is a statement.

[1] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/deliveroo

analog31• 9 years ago

In my view, the problem is that "local restaurants" have to pay very high rent if they want to be close enough to their customers to support delivery. It's the same problem if you want to be a janitor -- it costs too much to live near where you work. This in turn limits Deliveroo's business, if there are not enough restaurants within delivery distance of a potential customer base.

So perhaps the problem statement is that janitors are willing to commute long distances, but hot food isn't.

bastawhiz• 9 years ago

To answer your first question: it's a better experience. Local restaurants have terrible websites with no photos and sketchy payment forms. Their delivery usually involves having cash for a tip. If there's a problem with your order, it's unlikely it'll be resolved.

With services like Deliveroo and others, your payment information is managed by a central third party, delivery quality is generally quite good, you get ETAs for your food, there's real customer support, the app/site is modern and easy to use with pictures and search, and you never need to keep cash on hand.

If every local restaurant had a system as effective as Domino's, I could see these services being in trouble. But that will almost certainly never be the case.

CommentCard2• 9 years ago

This is the real driver behind these sites. For a $6-7 delivery fee, they provide online ordering with an easy-to-read menu, a solid payment processor (I don't have to read my CC# off over a phone), and order-tracking that lets me schedule around the exact minute the food is going to arrive.

Most restaurants are largely unwilling or unable to provide a well-executed delivery service. I'm more than happy to pay an additional gratuity for the logistical system these delivery-services add.

twic2• 9 years ago

In London, before Deliveroo, we had Just Eat and Hungryhouse (and we still do). I would say that the big difference between those two and Deliveroo for consumers is the selection of restaurants: the former offer a huge array of 'normal' takeaways - Indian, Chinese, Thai, pizza, that sort of thing. Deliveroo has fancy stuff - hipster burger places, my local high-end 'modern British' restaurant, the nice sandwich deli down the hill (who offer a roast beef sandwich with "incredibly slutty gravy mayo"). I remember when i realised that i could punch some buttons on my computer and get a fresh crèpe Suzette delivered (from Le Mercury in Islington, i think).

(That said, looking on Deliveroo now, i see a lot of the usual suspects (including such not-quite-so-high-end options as KFC and Papa John's), so perhaps the perception is greater than the reality.)

I think that market differentiation goes hand-in-hand with owning the delivery infrastructure, because those high-end restaurants don't have their own delivery infrastructure. Delivery isn't part of the business model of a high-end sit-down restaurant, or part of the core competency of the people running a hipster burger startup (cooking and managing the Instagram account at the same time is hard enough!). Pure information brokers like Just Eat can't get you food from those places, but logistics operators like Deliveroo can.

I suspect this is why the existing platforms didn't do this - they already have complicated businesses built around the information bit, and didn't want to take on the complexity of also running logistics.

As for why this is worth 900 megabucks, well, that's easy: interest rates are at record lows, and there are tax breaks on venture capital.

contingencies5• 9 years ago

Delivery isn't part of the business model of a high-end sit-down restaurant, or part of the core competency of the people running a hipster burger startup (cooking and managing the Instagram account at the same time is hard enough!)

Haha, so true, even in Shenzhen! We have Baia Burger Concept, a local hipster burger chain with an instagram fetish... and instagram is banned in China!

JumpCrisscross• 9 years ago

high-end restaurants don't have their own delivery infrastructure

The New York City analog is Caviar. High-end restaurants love them because they pay real chefs to help design the interior of their delivery trucks and train their delivery people. They also develop special packaging for every restaurants menu. For example, ramen comes with the broth separated from certain toppings separated from the food, the broth in a relatively thermally sealed container and the noodles allowed to sweat (to keep from getting soggy).

gaius2• 9 years ago

In London, before Deliveroo, we had Just Eat and Hungryhouse

You are forgetting Deliverance, which always had great food from actual restaurants. They were (are?) more corporate-focussed then consumer tho', e.g. people in the City working late would call for food on the company Deliverance account.

Spooky23• 9 years ago

The niche here is that they get to bake the costs of things like rent and taxes out of the cost of goods sold.

I’m sure that these places get to skimp on safety regulations and other external scrutiny. If a kitchen only has a little space heater, there’s almost certainly a bunch of other shitty behavior that is probably illegal. If it’s mobile, I have no doubt that they “forget” to record revenue on the production side.

devdad• 9 years ago

As a side note; what does a service such as Deliveroo, Uber Food, Foodora, Wolt etc charge the restaurant per delivery?

noddy12• 9 years ago

Uber eats charges ~35% to restaurants in australia.

noddy12• 9 years ago

It seems silly to say that delivery food must be prepared in the back of a restaurant, on prime real estate, in the midst of sit-down diners.

People talked about the possibility of uber-for-food or "food-sharing", where the lady next door cooks a bunch of food and then all the neighbors get some.. I think this delivery-only kitchen model will be the reality of uber for food - hyper-local low cost kitchens which may be boxes in car parks, or may be operating out of cafes that don't normally open for dinner, or even out of suburban garages (with signoff from local health authorities).

Every suburb has a fairly standard, reasonable quality thai, chinese, pizza, indian and burger places. Lower price delivery incentivized users to go local, but if ratings are not great for the local option then they will get a more distant option for a slightly increased delivery price, pushing the local option to maintain quality.

Retail/hospitality real estate doesn't seem to have great prospects at this point. When you no longer need street frontage but rather just a back alley spot to sell food, and when amazon has dominated all street facing retail, it will be interested to see what happens to urban retail hubs.

gaius2• 9 years ago

Deliveroo in general seems to have a deliberate strategy of co-opting public spaces. You will often see their riders between jobs "parked" in a public square, for example. Good exposure for the brand perhaps, but normal companies don't do this - they have a depot. You never see a bunch of Fedex guys just "hanging out" in all their brand livery. As a taxpayer I wonder why I am subsidising their lack of proper facilities.

ukoki• 9 years ago

The phrase "dark kitchen" seems like an attempt to make this sound more illicit or unhygienic than it actually is. It's just a restaurant without the sitting part — I think "delivery-only restaurant" would be a fairer term.

How Deliveroo's 'dark kitchens' are catering from car parks

Related Stories