Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is the difference between a “Hub” kitchen and a “Spoke” kitchen?

JustKitchen has a unique “Hub and Spoke” operational model in which multiple “Hub” and “Spoke” commercial kitchens are strategically located throughout Taiwan, penetrating high-density urban areas. These kitchens prepare meals for delivery-only restaurants and food brands, as well as JustKitchen’s proprietary in-house food brands.

Hub Kitchens are larger commercial kitchens where meals are semi-prepared before being sent to Spoke Kitchens for final assembly. Typically, one Hub Kitchen supplies multiple Spoke Kitchens. This enables us to provide a fresh, high quality meal that exceeds customer’s expectations.

Spoke Kitchens are smaller facilities located in busy urban areas, where the final stages of meal preparation take place (heating / cooking, garnishing and packaging), before being delivered to the end consumer.Once a customer orders a meal through JustKitchen’s e-commerce platform or through one of our delivery partners’ apps, such as Uber Eats, the order is directed to the Spoke located nearest to the customer, where the semi-prepared order is finished and packaged. The meal is then picked up by one of our delivery partners and transported directly to the customer in a short amount of time – on average, 20 minutes or less.

2. What are the main advantages of JustKitchen’s model?

Greater Customer Reach, Increased Sales Volumes
Our unique Hub-and-Spoke model enables us and our restaurant partners to serve more customers. Most restaurants and ghost kitchens have a delivery radius they will not travel outside of, due to the potential for orders arriving cold and / or the extra transportation cost eroding profit margins. By centrally locating our large Hubs and strategically locating our smaller Spokes in higher density areas of Taiwan, JustKitchen’s delivery radius is much greater, which means we can reach more customers.Further, most restaurants only operate during certain portions of the day, while JustKitchen can operate its Spokes independently of typical dine-in restaurant hours. This means our partner restaurants can reach more customers at unconventional hours of their typical operating day, while our customers get the food they want, when they want it, wherever they are.
Faster Meal Prep and Delivery, Better Customer RetentionBecause only the final stages of meal preparation occur when a meal is ordered, and the meal is made at the Spoke closest to the customer, the time it takes to complete each order and deliver it to the customer is significantly reduced. Therefore, JustKitchen’s food output is higher, while meals arrive at the customer’s door faster, hotter and fresher.
Restaurant partners can rest assured that the quality of their brand(s) won’t be sacrificed by slow delivery times, but rather will be enhanced by our unique operating model. Meanwhile, customers are more likely to enjoy meals that arrive hot, fresh and fast – and become returning customers as a result.
Higher Profit Margins, Reduced Food Waste
By adopting the delivery-only restaurant model, our partners benefit from reduced overhead costs associated with maintaining a dine-in restaurant, such as rent, electricity and front-of-house staff.Additionally, because JustKitchen’s Hub-and-Spoke model means reduced food preparation times and access to customers across more parts of Taiwan, restaurant partners can expect an increase in their sales volumes.
Finally, JustKitchen’s proprietary technology ecosystem captures and analyzes customer data in real-time, thereby allowing us to measure the popularity of food items and predict peak ordering times, which facilitates superior supply chain optimization and results in less food being wasted.
Scalability with Less Risk
Launching a new restaurant, menu item, or food brand is risky when attempted within the traditional dine-in restaurant model. The launch of a new restaurant concept typically requires a considerable investment of time and capital, while customer feedback is not always easy to collect and measure. Additionally, a significant amount of time can pass before restaurants are able to determine whether a food concept is successful or not, during which time additional capital will continue to be spent.
JustKitchen’s technology captures and reveals invaluable insights into what customers are ordering, in which regions, at what times of the day. This not only enables us and our partners to better manage the supply chain and reduce food waste, as noted above, but it also allows our partners to test new menu items and concepts quickly and with less risk. New menu items and brands can be launched easily via our e-commerce platform and partner apps and customers’ purchase information and feedback can be tracked and evaluated instantly to determine an item’s level of success.
Our model also allows restaurants to scale up their operations and target new demographics, without the additional costs of opening a new physical location.

3. Does JustKitchen own any delivery-only restaurant brands?

JustKitchen owns several proprietary, delivery-only brands that cover a wide variety of cuisines and lifestyle choices. These brands, which are available to customers through our own e-commerce platform as well as via our delivery partners, currently include:

Hot Ones – spicy fried chicken
BodyFit – ready-made meals for the health-conscious consumer
BodyFit Breakfast – ready-made healthy breakfast meals
Just Chicken – serving a wide variety of marinated chicken wings and side dishes
Thai High – serving healthy Thai cuisine in bento boxes
LuWei Lab – a variety of Chinese noodle bowls
Bit Beef Noodle – Asian beef noodle broth
Boba Mania – Taiwanese bubble tea
Go Lean – healthy bento boxes developed by a nutritionist, catering to specific dietary needs
K Bao – Taiwanese Gua Bao (pork belly buns), filled with a variety of ingredients
Unadon – Japanese curry rice and eel rice bento boxes
SiChuan Beef Noodle – healthy beef noodle broth (spicy)
Burgers & Dogs – a variety of beef sliders and hot dogs with various toppings
Old Brew Soup Noodle Shop – a variety of noodle-based soups featuring braised, spiced and marinated meats
Craftsman’s Soul-Made Ramen and Donburi – Japanese style ramen noodles and donburi rice meals
JustKitchen “Party Room” – a combination of menu items from JustKitchen’s in-house brands

4. What is JustMarket?

JustMarket is JustKitchen’s online grocery delivery platform, which sells artisanal food items from our own in-house food brands as well as grocery items from our third-party partners. For example, JustMarket sells marinated chicken breasts from JustKitchen’s own BodyFit brand, as well as top quality marinated steaks from our third party partner, the upscale American steakhouse chain Smith & Wollensky. These grocery items and others can be ordered on their own via the JustMarket e-commerce platform or added on to meal orders placed on JustKitchen, which are then delivered directly to customers via our third-party delivery partners.

5. When was JustKitchen established, and who founded it?

JustKitchen was established in Taipei, Taiwan in 2019 by Jason Chen, President and CEO. Mr. Chen is the founder of the successful restaurant franchise operator Bayshore Pacific Hospitality Ltd., established in 2013. Bayshore Pacific is responsible for the successful launch and expansion of several international chains in Taiwan, including TGI Fridays, Smith & Wollensky, Dan Ryan’s Chicago Grill, and Texas Roadhouse. Today, Bayshore Pacific Hospitality has a combined annual revenue of more than US $100 million, with 28 restaurants and 1,300 employees.

6. Why did JustKitchen launch in Taiwan?

Taiwan is a densely populated country (ranked 17th in the world), with 23,476,640 people living on an island that is just 36,193 square kilometers in size¹. Taiwan’s average population density is 649 people per square kilometre¹, but it is much higher in urban areas – for example in Taipei, where the population density jumps to 10,000 people per square kilometre¹.

Taiwan’s high population density means that traffic is heavy, especially during peak times. So, travelling to a restaurant for a meal can be an unappealing and time-consuming task for many residents of Taiwan – especially young professionals who tend to work long hours. For these reasons, people increasingly prefer to have meals delivered to them. In Taiwan, 43% of people order food an average of 2-4 times per week², which accounts for 1.1 – 1.2 billion meals per year.In addition, Taiwan already has an established food and beverage industry, and is home to many world-renowned, Michelin star restaurants and celebrity chefs. Taiwan’s dining market is estimated to be worth US$16 Billion and has grown steadily for the past 17 consecutive years.

Finally, Taiwan offers relatively low overhead and operating costs relative to other countries with a similarly high population density.

1 – UN World Population Prospectus (2019 Revision)
2 – 1111 Job Bank, 2019

7. Will JustKitchen expand beyond Taiwan?

Yes, JustKitchen announced its first location outside of Taiwan with the opening of its first location in Hong Kong in May 2021. Since then JustKitchen has expanded to Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines, and sells a number of its proprietary brands in Japan and India via brand swap agreements.

8. What is JustKitchen doing to reduce the negative impact of takeout food packaging?

JustKitchen uses eco-conscious packaging that can be recycled or composted, for example, our packaging includes recyclable paper cups and compostable bento boxes.

9. How does JustKitchen’s proprietary technology help to streamline its operations and reduce food wastage?

All inventory and raw ingredients are tracked through an in-house Material Requirements Planning (MRP) / Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, down to the individual ingredient. This data is automatically incorporated into our database analysis stack, where it is used to accurately calculate and project future inventory demand requirements. It also feeds back into our purchasing system for procurement. Especially with seasonal variations in consumption and production due to farming, this system helps to keep track of what and when products will be needed, and helps prevent food overages / waste.

1. What is a ghost kitchen (a.k.a. cloud kitchen, dark kitchen, virtual kitchen, shadow kitchen or shared kitchen)?

Ghost kitchens are also commonly referred to as cloud kitchens, dark kitchens, virtual kitchens, shadow kitchens and shared kitchens, but for simplicity’s sake, we will refer to them as ghost kitchens.

Essentially, a ghost kitchen is a commercial facility that produces food specifically for delivery to end consumers. They do not have the dine-in area of a traditional brick-and-mortar restaurant and mostly consist of a kitchen space with culinary staff preparing meals for pick-up by third-party delivery companies such as Uber Eats. These meals are then transported to customers at home or at work. Ghost kitchens are typically converted from industrial areas, warehouses, empty retail spaces, parking lots and other underdeveloped or undesirable locations, and alleviate margin challenges for restaurants as they require a lower initial investment and lower overhead costs, with operations optimized for delivery.

The major benefits include a) minimal real estate and labour costs and b) limited premises liability as only kitchen staff and delivery providers are permitted on site.

Sometimes restaurant companies will use ghost kitchens to launch a delivery-only brand on a trial basis. For a limited time, a delivery-only test run of a concept can be conducted as consideration for a future bricks-and-mortar restaurant. A delivery-only restaurant concept also can be established within an existing bricks-and-mortar restaurant to generate ancillary revenues from its under-utilized capacity — essentially as a restaurant within a restaurant.

2. What are the different types of ghost kitchens?

Independent ghost kitchens – off-premise locations leased by a single restaurant or brand. Rather than rent from a third party, certain major restaurant brands are moving delivery and catering services off-site. Established restaurants, grocery stores or multi-branded restaurant companies can work with developers of these facilities, under a franchise-type structure or various other business models, to gain access to new ghost kitchens to expand their delivery capabilities and reach more customers. Alternatively, these players can negotiate contracts with third-party delivery services and/or develop mobile apps to facilitate deliveries from their own ghost kitchens.

Commissary kitchens – the most common form of ghost kitchen. These are shared kitchen spaces that are often owned and operated by third parties rather than by a single restaurant. At times, these kitchens have several restaurants or brands operating out of the same location, often sharing refrigeration and/or storage spaces.

3. Is a ghost kitchen more of a technology play or a restaurant?

For ghost kitchens – which are technology-led, data-driven entities – good food is key, but it’s equally or even more important to be tech savvy. The only way to get customers to interact with a ghost kitchen is through the use of technology. Ghost kitchen operators need to pay attention to what customers like and what they don’t like and that is enabled in the easiest ways via technology.

When in operation, it is simpler to optimize a ghost kitchen compared to a traditional restaurant, thanks to data. For example, data can be analyzed to predict what items will be in higher demand at a specific time, which has implications for the arrival of raw food inventory, the start of food preparation and the expectations of delivery drivers. Analytics, marketing channels and mobile apps are essential parts of a ghost kitchen business.

4. How do ghost kitchens financially perform compared to a traditional restaurant?

The biggest cost for a traditional restaurant is typically food and rent. A prime location with great food brings more foot traffic through the door, but high raw food costs and waste, plus rent, can extract most of a restaurant’s profit margin. Another major cost for traditional restaurants is payroll. Restaurants need servers and bussing staff, while ghost kitchens do not require these types of employees and can be located in the cheapest parts of a city with much less impact on profit margins.

Traditional restaurants are notorious for their low profit margins, typically in the range of 3% to 10%, if they are profitable at all. For ghost kitchens, profit margins typically range between 25-40% due to lower capital and operating costs enhanced by greater operating efficiencies.

5. How does a ghost kitchen’s initial setup cost compare to a traditional restaurant?

A ghost kitchen’s initial setup costs are a fraction of that of a traditional restaurant. First, there is no need to sign an expensive lease or train a large staff of servers and other front of house staff. Second, there is no need for furnishings and other front-of-house costs that are typically required with a dine-in restaurant. Hence, the initial setup cost of a ghost kitchen is substantially lower when compared to a traditional restaurant.

6. How scalable are ghost kitchens, physically speaking?

Apart from their obvious digital scalability, one of the major advantages of ghost kitchens is their physical scalability. Traditional restaurants have a limited number of seats. To scale, they typically need to invest more capital and time into setting up a new location. For ghost kitchens, which generally occupy warehouse-type real estate or under-utilized capacity in an existing restaurant, all it usually takes to scale up is finding another kitchen block to rent out. Even if renting equipment at a particular location isn’t possible, purchasing it and increasing square footage is cheaper for ghost kitchens compared to traditional restaurants. This is because they’re usually located in the cheaper parts of a city and none of the space they rent needs to be allocated to a seating area.

7. What is the difference in productivity levels between a traditional restaurant and a ghost kitchen?

A typical restaurant can process 15-20 delivery orders per hour with their full kitchen staff, but a ghost kitchen can process up to 60 with 1-2 employees. Cloud kitchens are built to remove the challenges in the supply chain system to produce a delivery-only item. They are more about building a system where everything is made on an assembly line, in a way where the employee is moving from left to right and not wastefully moving around the kitchen. There is a lot of volume coming in and out of a small, limited area. In short, ghost kitchens aim to maximise the utilisation and revenue per square foot of kitchen space.

8. What is the potential size of the global ghost kitchen market?

Ghost kitchens could create a $1 trillion global opportunity by 2030, according to Euromonitor. The firm predicts cheaper, faster and more reliable delivery could help this segment capture 50% of drive-thru service ($75 billion), 50% of takeaway foodservice ($250 billion), 35% of ready meals ($40 billion), 30% of packaged cooking ingredients ($100 billion), 25% of dine-in foodservice ($450 billion), and 15% of packaged snacks ($125 billion).

As of October 2020, the U.S. had 1,500 ghost kitchens, putting it ahead of the U.K. (750) but behind China (7,500+) and India (3,500+), according to Euromonitor data. The global restaurant industry was accelerated by third-party delivery expansions from 2010-2015, as restaurants wanted to get in the off-premise game but didn’t have the capacity to launch their own services. 2020 and beyond will be defined by a proliferation of ghost restaurants driving a rise in virtual food brands that exist only online with no physical locations.

9. How is a ghost kitchen more flexible than a traditional restaurant?

With minimal risk and almost no capital investment, ghost kitchens can test new concepts, food brands, menu items, seasonal promotions or other temporary ideas by simply investing some time and applying a few keystrokes, a graphic designer and some social media posts. Attempting the same in a traditional restaurant would require more risk, more money and more time, plus printing costs, more expensive traditional advertising and other costs to align the restaurant’s dine-in area with the new concepts.

10. To what extent does location matter for a delivery-only business like a ghost kitchen?

Choosing the right location for a ghost kitchen maximizes access to customer demand in a particular catchment area and reduces the average delivery time to them.

11. How are ghost kitchens positioned to respect the environment compared to traditional restaurants?

First, ghost kitchens have a smaller footprint than traditional restaurants, which means they consume less in utilities. Second, by using technology to better understand each facility’s demand curve, ghost kitchens have an advantage in reducing food waste. Third, it is easier these days for the packaging used by ghost kitchens to be eco-friendly by either being recyclable, reusable, minimal or compostable. Fourth, since menus are digital there are no printing costs required, which saves paper each and every time that a change is made. Fifth, since deliveries are typically made on fuel efficient vehicles, the overall carbon footprint of a ghost kitchen is smaller than a typical restaurant that requires people to drive to it in their typically larger automobiles. Going forward, ghost kitchens will continue to demonstrate their environmental advantages over traditional restaurants as well.

12. How has the consumer market shifted in favour of ghost kitchens?

One of the major reasons for a restaurant to pivot toward ghost kitchens and delivery-only food brands is a widespread pandemic, like the global COVID-19 pandemic experienced in 2020. Ghost kitchen operators have benefitted due to the sudden change in mass consumer behaviour. Consumers have become less comfortable with dining out, and many are tired of cooking at home. Food ordering apps have become one of the biggest winners of the pandemic in the food and beverage industry.

Despite their advantages, ghost kitchen operators still need to be wary of whether this shift in consumerism is here to stay, just another fad, or something in between. The demand for delivery-only food will likely subside post-pandemic as humans crave face-to-face interactions and sharing a meal with friends and family. However, the impact of our modern-day lives such as longer working hours, will likely continue to make ordering meals for delivery a popular choice.

13. How is the food prepared in a ghost kitchen and how are they regulated? And what are the potential risks/difficulties arising from this new industry, if any?

Based on their location, ghost kitchens are subject to various national and/or local food safety requirements. Depending on their specific activities, ghost kitchens could also be subject to certain other food safety, public health and/or other administrative requirements.

Failure to comply with applicable food safety requirements not only is unlawful but also exposes companies operating ghost kitchens to significant potential liability. Therefore, it is important for all ghost kitchens to have stringent food safety procedures in place, and for companies using commissary ghost kitchens to verify that the owners (and other users) of such kitchens are operating in compliance with applicable food handling and production requirements.

In situations where ghost kitchens are subject to the same national and local food-safety laws as bricks-and-mortar restaurants, and are required to undertake regular inspections by a health board, it could be difficult for customers to track a particular food brand’s safety record.

14. If ghost kitchens are so much more advantageous than traditional restaurants, then what role will traditional restaurants play in the future?

A pivot to a delivery-only strategy might not be desirable or feasible for all restaurants. High volumes are still required for a ghost kitchen concept to be profitable. Alternatively, ghost kitchens can give new restaurants a head start on hiring and training staff and finding local vendors, as well as on revenues, while the bricks-and-mortar location is being built. Ultimately, restaurants are designed to create in-person experiences through table-side service and the facilitation of interactions between people. The demand for these experiences will likely increase as the global COVID-19 pandemic subsides.