Alex Danco:

As Cooking As A Service expanded from <10% to 25-30+% of our eating, we grew to consume and expect a far greater selection and variety of food compared to when we did all our cooking ourselves. Our consumption choices around what food we eat gradually pivoted from “What am I able to cook for myself” to “Is this exactly what I want to eat, yes or no?” Once you transition into “is this exactly what I want, yes or no” territory, it’s very hard to go back; it becomes a part of the standard of living that we expect.[…]

From a couple of anecdotal conversations I’ve had with restaurant managers about this, it seems like once you open yourselves up as a restaurant that can be found on the delivery apps, a huge percentage of your kitchen volume switches over to fulfilling those orders, and your front-of-house costs get hung out to dry as increasingly unnecessary. Flexible, modular kitchens that are available for rent for any chef who wants to cook in it, and that have easy access to delivery cars and which pay for no front-of-house extras seem pretty obviously like the next iteration of back-end Cooking as a Service, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see them pop up everywhere soon enough. If they can collectively bring down the cost of outsourced cooking another 20-30%, I think the economics start looking pretty compelling for outsourced cooking (including delivery) to effectively pay for itself out of the savings incurred by paying for ingredients and cooking equipment in bulk. At that point, kitchens start to truly become optional.

Flexible, modular kitchens. What’s basically being described here is Deliveroo’s dark kitchens: containers that restaurants can rent to deliver food in areas that they couldn’t otherwise reach.

Vicino alla stazione di East Dulwich c’è un capannone dal quale fuoriescono a qualsiasi orario del giorno e in maniera costante motorini di Deliveroo. Altra constatazione su Deliveroo: a East Dulwich consegnano certi ristoranti del centro che a East Dulwich non esistono.

Com’è possibile? Negli ultimi anni Deliveroo ha aperto diverse di quelle che il Guardian definisce ‘dark kitchens’ — 66 per la precisione. Si trovano in posti non particolarmente affascinanti, a volte dentro container, e permettono ai ristoranti di espandere il loro raggio di consegna senza dover aprire un vero e proprio locale:

Ten metal boxes of a similar size to a shipping container are on this site in Blackwall. They are fitted with industrial kitchen equipment, and two or three chefs and kitchen porters are at work in each, preparing food for restaurants including the Thai chain Busaba Eathai, the US-style MeatLiquor diners, the Franco Manca pizza parlours and Motu, an Indian food specialist set up by the family behind Mayfair’s Michelin-starred Gymkhana.

[…]

This is one of the biggest of 11 sites currently operated by Deliveroo that are home to 66 dark kitchens. Five sites use the metal structures, known as Rooboxes or Deliveroo Editions, while others are in adapted buildings. The majority are in London, but there are others in Leeds, Reading and Hove, tucked away in car parks or on industrial estates. All are close to residential and office areas filled with customers hungry for upmarket takeaways.

In altre parole: il cibo che ordinate dal posto ‘hip’ in centro può darsi provenga invece da un capannone.