Will Ghost Kitchens Define The Restaurant Industry's Future?

When rumors swirled this summer that a second dining room shutdown was on the horizon for Las Vegas, local restaurateur team Alexandra Lourdes and Lin Jerome knew they needed a big delivery idea — and fast — to survive. 

The owners of Saint Honoré, a pastry shop specializing in doughnuts and beignets, had already laid off half of their employees during the pandemic. The eatery could only serve in-store guests at 50% capacity per Nevada’s COVID-19 restrictions, and the cost of rent was a growing stressor, especially since the business was only open through 3 p.m. But that cost burden sparked an idea.

"We’re paying rent 24/7, so why not utilize that space for extra revenue?" Lourdes said. 

In just days, Lourdes and Jerome developed plans to use Saint Honoré as a ghost kitchen for a new virtual pizza brand, Pizza Anonymous, during its off-hours. The brand didn’t require supply chain changes because it uses Saint Honoré dough materials and topping ingredients like meat and cheese from Lourdes’ and Jerome’s cafe concept, Café Lola. The extension into a new daypart also allowed Saint Honoré to bring back out-of-work employees, and required little cross-training since staff were already experts at making dough from scratch. 

The team used Italian family recipes passed down to Jerome’s husband to create four staple pizza offerings and a cheese bread, and sold leftover beignets from Saint Honoré’s morning operations as dessert — squeezing extra revenue from its existing business.