Wendy's is planning to open 700 'ghost kitchens' by 2025 to meet food delivery demand

[Shawn Knight]

In brief: Wendy’s is planning to open 700 “ghost kitchens” by 2025 in order to meet the growing demand of customers that want their orders brought to them. A ghost kitchen, for those unfamiliar, is just another name for a professional food prep kitchen or cooking facility that exclusively handles delivery orders. Think of it as a fast food spot, but without an order counter, drive-thru or space to dine in.

I’ve written time and again about how the pandemic has reshaped our daily lives, and how many of those changes are likely to become permanent. One area that’s been impacted especially hard is the food services industry, where robots are finding a home alongside human workers.

But that’s not the only major change taking place. Some restaurants and fast food chains have seen a massive increase in delivery orders – so much so that they’re changing how they operate to accommodate.

Wendy’s aims to open its new ghost kitchens across the US, Canada and in the UK, primarily in large cities, with the goal of getting at least 50 sites up and running by the end of 2021. They’ll be working with Reef Technology Inc., a Miami-based company, on the project, after conducting a successful test run in Canada last year involving eight such kitchens.

The fast food chain said it expects sales of $500,000 to $1 million annually per location. Wendy’s will take a six percent cut of the sales, and will utilize existing third-party services like Uber Eats, DoorDash and Grubhub to handle deliveries.

The Associated Press noted that deliveries from restaurants and fast food establishments were already on the rise before the pandemic sent them into overdrive. In the year that ended in June 2019, deliveries accounted for 3.3 percent of US restaurant traffic according to data from NPD Group. For the year that ended June 2021, deliveries represented 8.4 percent of total restaurant traffic.

Wendy’s specifically said its digital sales, which include mobile orders for pickup and deliveries, made up 7.5 percent of total sales in the second quarter of 2021. That’s up from just 2.5 percent during the same quarter in 2019.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/90789-wendy-planning-open-700-ghost-kitchens-2025-meet.html

 

[Neatfeatguy]

I'm too damn cheap to pay someone to deliver my food to me. Only delivery I do would be for pizza. If I want something from Jimmy John's or Wendy's, I'm not paying that delivery surcharge for Uber or Doordash to bring me my food, let alone having to tip on top of it. What would have been maybe $7-8 for a lunch, turns into $17....helI no. I will drive my sorry rear to the establishment I want to eat from and get my food myself.

 

[penn919]

I'm too damn cheap to pay someone to deliver my food to me. Only delivery I do would be for pizza. If I want something from Jimmy John's or Wendy's, I'm not paying that delivery surcharge for Uber or Doordash to bring me my food, let alone having to tip on top of it. What would have been maybe $7-8 for a lunch, turns into $17....helI no. I will drive my sorry rear to the establishment I want to eat from and get my food myself.

If you're too damn cheap, why would it make any difference whether you get Pizza delivered vs anything else? You know you can pick-up pizza too? With that said, I haven't bought into the food delivery fad either. I do; however, enjoy the convenience of ordering online.

 

[ShadowDeath]

I'd rather they just build an actual Wendy's in my town so I don't have to drive to the next one over.

 

[RudyBob]

I still make all my own meals and will continue to do so until I am an O or a Q

 

[Bl00dyMinded]

If you're too damn cheap, why would it make any difference whether you get Pizza delivered vs anything else? You know you can pick-up pizza too? With that said, I haven't bought into the food delivery fad either. I do; however, enjoy the convenience of ordering online.

When you order pizza from a place that delivers you are only paying the price of the pie and normally about $4 in delivery fee.

When you use a third party to do the delivery for you, they upcharge the price of the item, they charge you a delivery fee, a service fee and then tip. And if you don't tip, then you have the entitled folks crying about it and making videos.

So I agree here only for pizza in my book too. Mostly because I refuse to pay the upcharge cost of items.

 

[Neatfeatguy]

When you order pizza from a place that delivers you are only paying the price of the pie and normally about $4 in delivery fee.

When you use a third party to do the delivery for you, they upcharge the price of the item, they charge you a delivery fee, a service fee and then tip. And if you don't tip, then you have the entitled folks crying about it and making videos.

So I agree here only for pizza in my book too. Mostly because I refuse to pay the upcharge cost of items.

I agree.

A local restaurant my family and I like, they have good burgers. A juicy lucy is, I think, listed at $12 on thier dine in menu. The same burger on the pick up/delivery menu that goes through Doordash is $15. If a normal family of 4 would cost around $60 with tax and tip eating at the restaurant, the same meals would cost easily $80 getting out delivered due to upcharge on items, delivery fee and a tip..... and the tip goes to the driver and not the establishment. That was the one and only time I ever used a delivery service, the upcharges are horrible.

If I were to order pizza and we'll say it's $40 after tip and delivery. I could save $3 on a delivery fee and only pay $37 to get it myself. The cost of pizza delivery isn't questionable, so I don't mind paying for pizza to be delivered.

 

[Shadowboxer]

I’ve still never had a Wendy’s. It’s not like I haven’t had a chance! I should be heading to Seattle again somepoint soon, il make a point of getting one then.

 

[penn919]

When you order pizza from a place that delivers you are only paying the price of the pie and normally about $4 in delivery fee.

When you use a third party to do the delivery for you, they upcharge the price of the item, they charge you a delivery fee, a service fee and then tip. And if you don't tip, then you have the entitled folks crying about it and making videos.

So I agree here only for pizza in my book too. Mostly because I refuse to pay the upcharge cost of items.

That's a fair point. So the conclusion would then be to order via "first-party" delivery rather than order only Pizza delivery....or you could be like me and avoid fast food altogether. That'll save a crap ton more .

 

[HofyPC]

We dont have delivery for anything around here, not even pizza. You want a Big Mac, you drive the almost 17 miles one way to get one and then pay over $9 for the Big Mac meal. This is why I cook so much. Yes I can make a Big Mac clone at home that not only taste like the one from the restaurant, but is actually BIG.

 

[Tantor]

This is a good business opportunity. After Biden forces supermarkets to require a vaccine passport, Anti-Vaxxers will drive up the need for home delivery.

 

[Drayy667]

As a food delivery driver I can say with confidence
that maybe if they opened the stores they have first they wouldn't have issued meeting delivery demand. My town has 2 wendys and both are drive thru only. Because of this their drive thru lines are long(and slow) and I won't pick up orders from them. If they want to meet delivery demand you need to improve your current operations, not build ghost kitchens.

 

[Neatfeatguy]

As a food delivery driver I can say with confidence
that maybe if they opened the stores they have first they wouldn't have issued meeting delivery demand. My town has 2 wendys and both are drive thru only. Because of this their drive thru lines are long(and slow) and I won't pick up orders from them. If they want to meet delivery demand you need to improve your current operations, not build ghost kitchens.

Some of the problem comes from staff shortage, which can (and does) trickle into the food trucks making deliveries from their warehouses to these restaurant business.

A couple of weeks ago I stopped by a local Wendy's. It's a smaller location than the normal sit down ones, it only has room for maybe 20 people to sit down inside at the absolute most. They were short staffed, only 3 people working and the store manager was entering the building as I pulled around to a parking spot to wait for my order. The lady working the drive thru window said they're too short staffed to operate the dinning room and drive thru, which is why the dinning room was closed.

The Dairy Queen right next door had a line of cars in the drive thru lane and as I sat in the car with the windows down, I could hear the manager coming out to explain to the cars waiting that due to short staff on hand it could be upwards of a 20 minute wait to order and get their food. She even hung a sign apologizing for the long wait times...3 of the cars in line left. As I sat waiting for my order from Wendy's to be brought out, was about 5 minutes, the drive thru line at DQ never moved.

If you lack the personnel to properly manage the customers, the what once used to be speedy service can come to a crawl.