As the ghost kitchen trend continues to grow in Chicago and throughout the U.S. amid the Covid-19 pandemic, a well-known seafood chain opened a virtual location in downtown Chicago today.
Red Lobster is bringing its first delivery-only ghost kitchen to the South Loop at 2537 S. Wabash Ave., a location where the restaurant will cook meals and deliver them to nearby neighborhoods. Being a ghost kitchen, the location will not have a dining room or any dine-in component.
Orlando, Florida-based Red Lobster will deliver to Chicagoans in the Loop, River North, Illinois Institute of Technology’s campus, Prairie District and the Near South Side via food delivery companies like Grubhub, DoorDash, Uber Eats and Postmates. Delivery orders can be placed seven days a week from 10:30 a.m. to 10:30 p.m.
Like many other restaurants, Red Lobster has seen an increase in takeout and delivery orders from its traditional dine-in restaurants, which helped sparked the idea for a ghost kitchen concept. CEO Kim Lopdrup said in a statement that the restaurant chain has tripled its off-premise sales in the last eight months.
Several Chicago restaurants have also turned to ghost kitchens during the pandemic, some of which are doing so through a new DoorDash program that recently launched in the Windy City. The initiative matches shuttered restaurants with ghost kitchen operators, and has already partnered with local restaurant Krazy Hog BBQ.
But some companies were experimenting in the ghost kitchen sector even before Covid-19. Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick began building a food delivery startup called CloudKitchens in 2016, which buys up cheap real estate and turns those spaces into kitchens that are exclusively used for food delivery.
CloudKitchens has already raised $400 million in outside funding, and a recent Wall Street Journal analysis found that Kalanick has invested $130 million into properties across nearly two dozen cities as he assembles ghost kitchen space.
Closer to home, Grubhub last year partnered with Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises to deliver meals made from Bon Appétit and Whole30 recipes, as well as authentic Indian cuisine.
Additionally, local startup 2nd Kitchen launched in 2018 to allow businesses without kitchens, like bars, breweries, smoke lounges and bowling alleys, to set up their own virtual kitchens by serving food from nearby restaurants.
