The future of Ghost Kitchens: Marketplace optimisation
While increasing sales channels and optimising operations and space is a great start, marketing your offer properly is the other crucial element to the success of your ghost kitchen.
Millions of restaurants and ghost kitchens worldwide are fighting for customer attention. Being the first in any marketplace can make a huge difference in a business’s bottom line.
Is your ghost kitchen properly set to rank on top? In a previous post in this series: “The future of Ghost Kitchens: Efficiency, growth, expansion?”, we discussed how a technological expansion, new consumer dynamics caused by the global pandemic, and a change in consumer behavior have contributed to the growth and evolution of Ghost Kitchens (also known as dark kitchens) worldwide.
While increasing sales channels and optimizing operations and space is a great start, marketing your offer properly is the other crucial element to the success of your ghost kitchen.
To get started, we’ll dive deep into some essential learnings shared by our Co-Founder and CEO Zhong Xu during his keynote at the 2nd Annual Ghost Kitchen & Virtual Restaurant Conference in Dallas, USA.
Achieving marketplace optimisation combines three key steps: Learning to get the basics right, improving your brand, and optimising your online presence.
Market and optimise your virtual brand
Can you imagine a restaurant without a menu? Or one with a different name at every touchpoint? No, your restaurant needs consistency. The same logic applies to your digital presence. Having the proper information in the correct places allows you to start a customer's journey on the right foot. To keep your customer well informed and eager to try your food, you might want to consider this:
- Get your brand name right, and tag your food in the proper categories. Define what “categories” are the right ones for your ghost kitchen.
- Keep your menus simple, set up the correct description or name, and have professional pictures of products.
- Experiment with new products, lower prices, combo deals, and promotions, but also set up the correct menu availability so that customers can enter your virtual store and pre-order.
Menus, pricing & promos
The next thing on the list is your digital menu. It allows your potential customers to understand what you cook, how much it costs, and any additional benefits. It’s your presentation card, but this one is dynamic, can change, and be adapted. Here are some ideas to get you started.
- Change hero image by event and work in your packaging hero image.
- Work with rotating promotions, always have a promo running to get on top, and increase your price to still make a profit. Think of having a promotion calendar with automatic reminders, so you always have something new to offer.
- Set up multiple menus / day / week / special events / experiments
Things to consider:
How fast are you delivering delicious food? How do your customers rate your ghost kitchen? Answering those questions can help you rank higher on delivery apps. Consider this:
- Five stars food? We have noticed that the number of ratings and scores are important, but we see that there are diminishing returns after a 4.2-star rating. Try to keep a healthy rating score around that number.
What can you do?
- Push your ratings by incentivising customers who give you a 4-5 star rating.
- Convert loyal customers into returning customers by adding special discounts or any other benefit
- Speed is the name of the game. Acceptance and delivery times are crucial. The average delivery window for food is around 35 minutes, while about 33% of consumers have the most significant complaints about slow delivery.
What can you do?
- Cooking prep times should be optimized to 8-10 minutes so that delivery can happen within 30 minutes. A good idea to optimize is to create workstations to add control and flexibility in how you prepare your food.
- How healthy are your error rates? It is a big question to ask yourself and your team. Why? Platforms rank higher brands with lower acceptance times and error rates. Your goal must be to keep your error rate below 3%
What can you do?
- Start by analysing your data and looking for trends. When do errors happen? Is any dish or category causing the majority of the errors?
- Take action. You can think of solutions for a repetitive problem. Is it possible to fix the dish or its packaging? Would it be better to take that item off the menu?
Market your Ghost Kitchen
Once you have everything set up properly, it is time to tell the world about your amazing food! Social media is vital for reaching new customers, and as a ghost kitchen, your digital presence is essential to attracting and getting new customers.
But why is it so important? For ghost kitchens, social media is the only means of communicating with their customers and building a loyal base.
Here are two basic suggestions:
- Own your social media presence
You want to be active on as many platforms as possible. But if you have limited resources, pick the most suitable platforms for your business and concentrate your efforts on those.
- Consider online advertising
Online advertising is a good way to build traffic to your website when you’ve just set up your company. Sites like Facebook, Instagram, and Google offer paid advertisements where you pay for every customer who clicks on the ad. That means you only pay when a customer shows interest.
When it comes to marketing your ghost kitchen, every digital tool, asset, and space is an opportunity. Every improvement you make to your online presence (marketplace or social media) will help you get the recognition you need to reach more customers.
If you want to know more about Ghost Kitchens? Check our Guide to Dark Kitchens: Everything you need to know for a better look into this exciting business model.
Stay tuned and follow us on social media and LinkedIn for more relevant content.
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