
How Deliveroo's 'dark kitchens' are catering from car parks - Hates_
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/oct/28/deliveroo-dark-kitchens-pop-up-feeding-the-city-london
======
philfrasty
I want to better understand the value-proposition / niche of services like
Deliveroo compared to classical online food-delivery companies.

If I wanted to order food online for the last 10 years I could simply order
through various services that connected me to local restaurants.

\- First question: why is there a niche for services like Deliveroo at all? If
a local restaurant does not offer delivery there are hundreds of other
restaurants that do. I am completely indifferent in choosing one.

\- Second question: it seems the value of Deliveroo is in (?) building the
infrastructure to deliver the food rather than restaurants themselves. This
seems much easier to do for existing platforms that already have signed up all
the local restaurants and build this on top to aggregate all restaurants.

What is the scenario here? $900 Mio. [1] in funding sure is a statement.

[1]
[https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/deliveroo](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/deliveroo)

~~~
twic
In London, before Deliveroo, we had Just Eat and Hungryhouse (and we still
do). I would say that the big difference between those two and Deliveroo for
consumers is the selection of restaurants: the former offer a huge array of
'normal' takeaways - Indian, Chinese, Thai, pizza, that sort of thing.
Deliveroo has fancy stuff - hipster burger places, my local high-end 'modern
British' restaurant, the nice sandwich deli down the hill (who offer a roast
beef sandwich with "incredibly slutty gravy mayo"). I remember when i realised
that i could punch some buttons on my computer and get a fresh crèpe Suzette
delivered (from Le Mercury in Islington, i think).

(That said, looking on Deliveroo now, i see a lot of the usual suspects
(including such not-quite-so-high-end options as KFC and Papa John's), so
perhaps the perception is greater than the reality.)

I think that market differentiation goes hand-in-hand with owning the delivery
infrastructure, because those high-end restaurants don't have their own
delivery infrastructure. Delivery isn't part of the business model of a high-
end sit-down restaurant, or part of the core competency of the people running
a hipster burger startup (cooking and managing the Instagram account at the
same time is hard enough!). Pure information brokers like Just Eat can't get
you food from those places, but logistics operators like Deliveroo can.

I suspect this is why the existing platforms didn't do this - they already
have complicated businesses built around the information bit, and didn't want
to take on the complexity of also running logistics.

As for why this is worth 900 megabucks, well, that's easy: interest rates are
at record lows, and there are tax breaks on venture capital.

~~~
gaius
_In London, before Deliveroo, we had Just Eat and Hungryhouse_

You are forgetting Deliverance, which always had great food from actual
restaurants. They were (are?) more corporate-focussed then consumer tho', e.g.
people in the City working late would call for food on the company Deliverance
account.

~~~
twic
I've never come across them. There's also Seamless, which i think is also
focused on corporate clients (i only found out about them at work!), but i
don't know how recently they came to London.

------
barrkel
The dark kitchen setup isn't just for delivery; I was wandering down a lane
alongside one of London's many railways one evening and got chatting to a chap
that was having a smoke. A number of the archways housed separate little
kitchens, some of them cooking for delivery, but others preparing food that
would later be composed at high end restaurants. It sounded like things that
take a lot of preparation or cooking are sometimes done centrally and shipped
out in time for the main evening meals.

~~~
Balgair
My old super in LA did this for a while too, before becoming a super. Much of
the high-end 'catering' is done in apartments all over LA. I liked him a lot,
but never asked about what the health inspector thought of the 3 cats.

------
fragmede
This is merely the logical extension of app-centralization of food delivery -
if Deliveroo is the brand that I'm buying from, and not an actual
Indian/Thai/whatever restaurant with a name I trust and recognize, then
Deliveroo might as well operate the kitchen part as well.

The interesting part, to me, is going to be is if the other half of the
restaurant experience - the dining area manages to become a thing - sometimes
I want takeout so I can eat in the comfort of my own home, but sometimes I
actually want to eat out. Is there a new business model enabled by this, for a
fancy restaurant with no kitchen? Order whatever food you wanted to the place,
they would take it, plate it as only a fancy restaurant can do, and then serve
it to you with the appropriate flourishes, on a table with cloth tablecloth
and fancy silverware. Finally, they would take away the dishes (and clean
them), but without the cheapness of eating out of cardboard boxes.

~~~
psadri
From what I have heard from restaurateur friends - it's very difficult to have
high quality food that was not prepared immediately before serving. So it is
not as simple as plating it.

------
spunker540
I'm not surprised that as food delivery services gain popularity,
restauranteurs are starting to realize that you can save a lot of money on
rent and facilities, if you focus on a delivery-only model. Here in the US
it's still mostly traditional restaurants doing delivery through seamless,
grubhub, uber eats etc. but I'm sure this model is right around the corner.

Out of curiosity a while ago I tried looking into what it takes to be a
seamless vendor and it seemed like they were mostly expecting established
brick and mortar restaurants to sign up, rather than enterprising new ventures
that exclusively sell through them.

~~~
the_mitsuhiko
When I was living in Lindon I regularly ordered from hungryhouse. On my way
home from work I always walked past a sleezy place which sells asian food, had
never any people in and the house looked really badly maintained. Only after a
few orders and walking past this place I realize I ordered from them a few
times.

After seeing the place and making the connection I never ordered again from
there.

It definitely made me realize that I pick food differently for delivery than I
do eating out.

------
frakkingcylons
So they're cooking food in a metal box in a parking lot. I don't see the
issue. People seem to like food trucks just fine and the only difference is
wheels and an engine.

~~~
DanBC
> and the only difference is wheels and an engine.

and planning permission, and hygiene inspection.

~~~
frakkingcylons
Hygiene inspection is still being carried out. From the article:

“Dan Warne, Deliveroo’s UK and Ireland managing director, admits the company
did not move quickly enough to speak to the council and residents in
Southwark, but says Roobox kitchens are clean, hygienic and checked by the
Food Standards Agency.”

~~~
DanBC
FSA don't do food safety checks in premises.

Local authorities do the checks.

Does deliveroo not understand the regulatory framework? Is this just lazy
reporting?

------
moomin
I live near Il Mirto (mentioned in the article). a) It’s in East Dulwich, not
Dulwich b) it does Italian Italian food, not British or American Italian food
c) its branding and presentation leaves something to be desired. I can see why
Deliveroo constitutes a problem for them: the big brands and solid
presentation are going to win.

------
cm2187
I made the mistake to order from one of those, the food was just disgusting.
There are 5 or 6 fake restaurants like those appearing in the list, all with
the same post code. It taught me the habit of checking the postcode and google
street view before ordering from any new restaurant on Deliveroo.

~~~
icebraining
According to the Daily Mail (which, granted...) those listings say they're
"Deliveroo Editions". I couldn't find an example on the site, though.

~~~
cm2187
I can still see them, here is two:

[https://deliveroo.co.uk/menu/london/blackwall/dirty-bones-
bl...](https://deliveroo.co.uk/menu/london/blackwall/dirty-bones-blackwall)

[https://deliveroo.co.uk/menu/london/blackwall/la-
pistola](https://deliveroo.co.uk/menu/london/blackwall/la-pistola)

They are now flagged as "editions" but they weren't when I last tried one.

------
noddy1
It seems silly to say that delivery food _must_ be prepared in the back of a
restaurant, on prime real estate, in the midst of sit-down diners.

People talked about the possibility of uber-for-food or "food-sharing", where
the lady next door cooks a bunch of food and then all the neighbors get some..
I think this delivery-only kitchen model will be the reality of uber for food
- hyper-local low cost kitchens which may be boxes in car parks, or may be
operating out of cafes that don't normally open for dinner, or even out of
suburban garages (with signoff from local health authorities).

Every suburb has a fairly standard, reasonable quality thai, chinese, pizza,
indian and burger places. Lower price delivery incentivized users to go local,
but if ratings are not great for the local option then they will get a more
distant option for a slightly increased delivery price, pushing the local
option to maintain quality.

Retail/hospitality real estate doesn't seem to have great prospects at this
point. When you no longer need street frontage but rather just a back alley
spot to sell food, and when amazon has dominated all street facing retail, it
will be interested to see what happens to urban retail hubs.

------
thisisit
This making me a bit nauseous. Two things come to mind. Can Deliveroo and the
restaurants do things like this? Restaurants need to go through a food safety
agency before they open followed by regular checks. What kind of checks or
regulatory frames do these "Rooboxes" fall in? Is it another case of ignorance
of the law in name of tech disruption? The whole "fake it till you make it".

I maybe wrong but isn't this kind of lying to the customers? While people are
expecting "Takeaway Delivery from Premium Restaurants", as Deliveroo puts it,
what they are getting is something from a place which isn't really the
restaurant. Sure people have been trained but is it really the same?

~~~
zootboy
From the article:

> Dan Warne, Deliveroo’s UK and Ireland managing director, admits the company
> did not move quickly enough to speak to the council and residents in
> Southwark, but says Roobox kitchens are clean, hygienic and checked by the
> Food Standards Agency.

~~~
DanBC
For food safety from restaurants I think of the "scores on the doors" scheme.
FSA doesn't do the checking for that scheme. The local authority do the
checks. The FSA hold the results.

[http://ratings.food.gov.uk/](http://ratings.food.gov.uk/)

I can't find results for any of the rooboxes, but maybe I'm not searching
properly.

I really hope they're talking about this scheme, and that all the rooboxes
have been checked.

~~~
thisisit
Found two with Deliveroo's name:

[http://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/en-
GB/957123/Deliveroo-L...](http://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/en-
GB/957123/Deliveroo-London)

[http://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/en-
GB/1002249/Deliveroo-...](http://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/en-
GB/1002249/Deliveroo-London)

The Roobox gives up three results: [http://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/en-
GB/960868/Blackwall-R...](http://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/en-
GB/960868/Blackwall-Roobox-London)

[http://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/en-
GB/957133/Rosa's-Roob...](http://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/en-
GB/957133/Rosa's-Roobox-Battersea-London)

[http://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/en-GB/960304/The-
Chilli-...](http://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/en-GB/960304/The-Chilli-
Pickle-Roobox---Hove-22-Olive-Road)

I am not from UK so don't know which one of them correspond to the ones
mentioned in the article.

~~~
DanBC
ah, right. I didn't even think to check for the roobox or deliveroo names.

I wonder if they're going to run into problems with advertising standards or
trading standards.

If I want "rotisserie chicken for the pricey Notting Hill-based specialist
Cocotte" I probably want it from their actual place, or to know it's from a
Roobox version.

------
gaius
Deliveroo in general seems to have a deliberate strategy of co-opting public
spaces. You will often see their riders between jobs "parked" in a public
square, for example. Good exposure for the brand perhaps, but normal companies
don't do this - they have a depot. You never see a bunch of Fedex guys just
"hanging out" in all their brand livery. As a taxpayer I wonder why I am
subsidising their lack of proper facilities.

------
devdad
As a side note; what does a service such as Deliveroo, Uber Food, Foodora,
Wolt etc charge the restaurant per delivery?

~~~
noddy1
Uber eats charges ~35% to restaurants in australia.

------
ukoki
The phrase "dark kitchen" seems like an attempt to make this sound more
illicit or unhygienic than it actually is. It's just a restaurant without the
sitting part — I think "delivery-only restaurant" would be a fairer term.

------
johnchristopher
Straight out from `Virtual Light`.

------
timthelion
How dystopian. Its ironic, how as technology improves, things often get worse,
because the cheapest, worse, solution becomes too cheep, and reasonable
solutions cannot compete. It is no harder for us, today, to install windows in
prefab buildings, than it was 10 years ago, but the windowless shipping
container has gotten so cheep, that the window becomes a considerable cost. It
is like how 30 years ago, most businesses had a telephone line and was easy to
contact but today, the idea of having an actual telephone line and secretaries
to answer the phone seems "too expensive". It wasn't any cheaper back then
though.

~~~
mseebach
> How dystopian

You're objecting to an aesthetic, not frankly anything of substance. Very few
restaurant kitchens are particularly pleasant places to work, often cramped
(because they take up square feet in prime real estate) and very hot. Three
staff in a container seems comparatively spacious.

Also, when The Guardian struggles to find other fault than temperature and
lack of appropriate council permits, that's about as strong a confirmation of
adequate working conditions you're likely to find.

~~~
tolien
A related article [1] suggests there's "room for six or seven chefs" which
sounds like a rather more cramped setup than three. One wonders, given they
don't seem to have bothered with planning permission, whether any
consideration's been given to fire safety either.

1:
[https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/oct/08/deliveroo-b...](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/oct/08/deliveroo-
battles-councils-over-pop-up-takeaway-food-kitchens)

~~~
timthelion
Are there really fire safety concerns in such small spaces?

~~~
subway
[https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/bikini-barista-
die...](https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/bikini-barista-dies-after-
fire-at-everett-coffee-stand/)

Yes.

