
The next big restaurant chain may not own any kitchens - briatx
https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/07/the-next-big-restaurant-chain-may-not-own-any-kitchens/
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sethhochberg
You don't even have to look to the big chains or into the future to see this
principle in action - in NYC, Seamless/Grubhub/etc have created a whole
industry of commissary kitchens operating multiple "restaurants" out of an
anonymous, shared prep space, doing all of their business by delivery. I'm
sure its probably the same in other similar markets.

(The idea isn't really new, either... even pre-internet, the thousands of food
carts and trucks around the city got most of their supplies from shared
commissary kitchens who do some degree of prep and cooking far away from where
the cart will eventually operate).

We're just watching TechCrunch writers and the investors they write about
discover commissary kitchens together.

~~~
psergeant
> thousands of food carts and trucks

And indeed restaurants themselves in the UK, especially pub ones, will order
quite a lot of their food partially prepped already

~~~
LoSboccacc
Same in Italy, certain restaurant classes get premade meals that only need
heating. Usually pubs but "enoteche" (wineries?) too

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Theodores
This idea is here already, at least in the UK. If you go into a motorway
service station, exhibition centre or a railway station then you are presented
with a choice of restaurants, coffee places and other stores. So you could
have 'Delice de France' next to a 'Burger King' and half a dozen other places
to 'choose from'.

What is not obvious is that one company, e.g. someone like 'Compass' group,
run all of the franchises at the site. So the choice is a fake one, the
infrastructure behind the store fronts is all the same with the same loading
bay for all the 'different' stores. The coffee may appear to be different and
you might be able to choose between your favourite Italian/American/British
coffeehouses and the coffee may even taste different in each of the different
outlets, however, you won't get cheap or brilliant coffee, no matter what you
believe about your chosen brand as, at that location, it is all coming from
the same company. This company has just franchised a few brands to operate its
storefronts from.

Luckily people are easily fooled and they do not ever think to ask if the same
company is behind all the apparent 'choices' they have on site. Communism was
more honest, they didn't have fake brands.

~~~
chrisseaton
I don’t really understand what you think the core of the problem is?

Why should a consumer care who owns the franchise? What difference does that
make to me?

If you have a service station with a Starbucks and a Burger King are you
saying they both secretly serve the same coffee? I’m sure Starbucks franchise
agreements do not allow that and it will be the coffee that Starbucks select
and roast (whether you think that’s good or bad), not the coffee Burger King
supply. So there is a real difference and a real choice there isn’t there?

They share a loading bay and a till system? Why on earth do care about that?

~~~
lucas_membrane
Because it is fake competition, which is pretty much what we get anymore. With
real competition, one of the two places might do a better job of pleasing
customers and get most of the business. With real competition, the employees
preparing and serving the food will get a free market wage. Otherwise, it is
all Disneypeople serving Disneyfood.

~~~
winningcontinue
it's not been free market competition for a long time. I look out at the
number of Pret a Mangers that office workers around me go to at lunch. It's
like watching pigs going to the troughs to feed. The buildings empty, the pigs
go to the next available spot and they return to their pens. They don't really
give a shit really how long the lines are. Also fast food employees getting
free market wages? They get minimum wage and if they work there for two years,
they get a dollar increase to their wage. That's it, there is no lateral
promotion.

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User23
Most chain and many local bar restaurants barely have kitchens as is, they
mainly just reheat Sysco or US Foods products.

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jaegerpicker
It's an interesting field that could potentially be huge. I'm working for a
startup in that space, so maybe I'm biased but food tech really has a chance
to change society. Exciting to be a part of it.

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Grue3
It won't be big because most people don't want to eat soggy food that has been
likely transported by a bicycle when they go to a restaurant.

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gwbas1c
Yet another fantasy that won't come true

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fredsanford
And the drive to mediocrity continues.

Now everybody can serve up TV dinners Applebees/IHOP/Darden Restaurant
style...

~~~
askafriend
Why do you assume it has to be low quality or mediocre?

The article is about infrastructure for food preparation and storage.

How many food entrepreneurs and chefs have you talked to? What are their
biggest pain points and what are the biggest barriers to entry to go from a
novel food idea to serving it up to customers? What are the biggest barriers
to quality in food?

How many restaurant-goers have you talked to? What kind of food do people want
and how is that changing? How fast are delivery businesses growing YoY and can
something like this enable more delivery-based restaurants?

There are so many interesting questions and data around this space.

If you have even a fraction of the answers to these question, please do share
and contribute because as it stands now, your statement is more suited for
Reddit. I can't respect such a shallow take on something quite complex.

~~~
a_c
I am very curious why food-related startups are mostly about delivery like
deliveroo and uberEats. Is it because of the advertising efforts put in, or my
lack of attention.

Would love to learn from someone who can shed some light on your set of
question!

~~~
mcintyre1994
> I am very curious why food-related startups are mostly about delivery like
> deliveroo and uberEats.

I assume because it's much cheaper to hire contractors than employees, and
it's much easier to make delivery drivers contractors (you can deliver for
lots of companies in one night) than chefs (you're not going to cook each
different meal for a different restaurant in one night). So if you only
provide the delivery you only need contractors for the actual service you
provide.

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anon49124
Hmm: looking at 19th century shops where only merchants picked products to
self-checkout today, that seems like the trend. Everyone will end up doing
everything themselves.

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gamechangr
duplicate - look at "past".

~~~
dang
On HN it isn't a duplicate if there haven't been many reposts and the previous
posts didn't get significant attention.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)

