Why the Huge Pop in Muscle Maker Stock Is Just the Beginning
GRIL stock is breaking out on heavy volume, and you can thank the rise of ghost kitchens for that
Original article byOct 26, 2020
Relatively obscure Muscle Maker (NYSE:GRIL) stock soared more than 60% higheron heavy volume on Monday, Oct. 26 — a day when the rest of the market dropped big on stalled stimulus talks and spiking Covid-19 cases.
It was an enormous rally in a small-cap restaurant stock that no one saw coming.
Well … almost no one.
In InvestorPlace’s financial newsletter The Daily 10X Stock Report — which is aimed at delivering to your inbox, every single day, a stock pick that could rise by at least 10X — I alerted subscribers on Sept. 30 that GRIL stock was an explosive play on the emerging ghost kitchen megatrend.
Since then, GRIL stock has soared more than 90%.
In other words, no one saw this massive rally in GRIL stock coming except for The Daily 10X subscribers. Those subscribers were also told about Nio (NYSE:NIO), Plug Power (NASDAQ:PLUG), Kandi (NASDAQ:KNDI), JinkoSolar (NYSE:JKS) and Digital Turbine (NASDAQ:APPS) before those stocks staged huge breakout rallies, and have scored 200%-plus gains in all those names (to read more about the newsletter, click here).
But back to GRIL stock, I think this big October breakout could actually be just the beginning of a much bigger, longer uptrend wherein shares soar above $10.
Here’s how that could happen.
The Emerging Ghost Kitchen Megatrend
The Covid-19 pandemic has entirely disrupted the world. That’s the bad news. But the good news is that where there’s disruption, there’s opportunity — and in the restaurant sector, that opportunity is emerging in the form of something called “ghost kitchens.”
Ghost kitchens are commercial kitchens, without any seating capacity, designed specifically for delivery orders. The concept has been around for some time. But it wasn’t until the Covid-19 pandemic — when physical restaurants shutdown and delivery demand surged — that ghost kitchens took center stage.
Now that they have the spotlight, ghost kitchens will inevitably turn into the future of dining for the following reasons:
- Better alignment with shifting demand (U.S. meal delivery sales have risen ~300% since 2018)
- Dramatically lower recurring costs (lower labor costs, lower rent costs, lower decoration costs, etc.)
- Significantly more flexibility (traditional restaurant locations operate on 5-plus year leases, whereas ghost kitchens are typically rented out monthly)
- More rapid, cost-effective geographic expansion (traditional restaurants cost upward of $250,000 to open, and such openings take several months; ghost kitchens cost about $20,000 to open and open in less than 90 days)
Of course, dine-in restaurants will forever be a thing. Ghost kitchens won’t entirely replace the traditional dining experience. But much like e-commerce has leveraged superior economics and convenience to garner a larger and larger share of the shopping pie, ghost kitchens will leverage superior economics and convenience to garner an increasingly large share of the dining pie.
And, to that end, investing in ghost kitchen stocks today is like investing in e-commerce stocks back in 2010.
One of the best ghost kitchen stocks to buy today? GRIL stock.