Kroger just surprised us again this year. First it set up a food hall within a store. Now it’s entered into the world of ghost-kitchen meal delivery. All it took was a linkup with a visionary who already had the infrastructure in place.
Long before the term ghost kitchen was born, Chris Baggott developed food-tech startup ClusterTruck in Indianapolis in 2015 with the idea that his remote kitchen and delivery operation would be a preparation and delivery resource for food trucks wanting to expand into delivery.
By and by, ClusterTruck’s world of menus, food/ordering and delivery took on bigger significance than food trucks, and ClusterTruck became its own “one-of-a-kind delivery restaurant” as it now operates in a few cities, including my hometown of Kansas City.
Ah, but a marketing best practice has emerged. Ghost kitchens are inherently invisible to the consumer. They are a blank screen in terms of branding. A ghost kitchen does not best operate as its own independent brand. There’s no emotional connection. Partnerships with established brands are the way to go. The Kroger partnership is quite strategic and perhaps a blueprint for ClusterTruck’s future endeavors.
Restaurants are already well on their way with ghost kitchens as the likes of delivery companies Grubhub and DoorDash expand their food delivery role to include food preparation for restaurants.
In its four-plus-year experience, ClusterTruck has the whole operational process down to an art and science, to the point that customers can have their meal within a half hour of placing their order. With the infrastructure, including a full menu, in place, ClusterTruck can court non-restaurants to present a complete plug-and-play meal-providing service that is going to take the restaurant industry by storm.
The already-crowded foodservice industry will only become more so as consumers get used to ordering food from these non-traditional locales. Imagine if ClusterTruck strikes a meal preparation, ordering and delivery partnership with Walmart, Target, Costco, Amazon, etc. … And customers get used to it? Who needs a restaurant?
My word of advice to ClusterTruck… You are a significant player. But as I said earlier: Ghost kitchens are inherently invisible to the consumer. They are a blank screen in terms of branding. A ghost kitchen does not best operate as its own independent brand. There’s no emotional connection. Do not seek to become a household word yourself. Be strategic with your marketing—letting your partner’s brand and marketing engine power the consumer connection. You have built the infrastructure. They have built a following. Though you are in the meal-providing driver’s seat operationally, take a back seat in the customer’s eyes. If you will embrace that, I predict that with the right partnerships, you will disrupt the restaurant industry completely. And kudos to Kroger.
Tell me what you think.
Jody
