How to start a virtual restaurant?
Imagine a place where food is prepared and sent out for on-location delivery. Voila! That's a Virtual Restaurant. A Virtual Restaurant, in plain words, is a delivery-only restaurant that doesn't cater to dine-in options. Such restaurants take home delivery or pick-up orders through Food delivery apps, Cloud kitchen websites, on-location, third-party food aggregators, etc. Since there is no requirement for a formal dining area, the restaurant is basically just a virtual kitchen and can be housed anywhere you find fit. It need not be any location, even as food trucks can serve as Virtual Restaurants.
Why start a virtual restaurant?
Low Capital Investment
Flexible Operations
Bigger Audience
Learn the steps to open a virtual restaurant:
Step 1: Create your unique brand concept
Step 2: Study Your Competitors
Step 3: Set up a robust online food ordering system
Step 4: Create a delicious digital menu
Step 5: Start promoting your virtual restaurant
A virtual restaurant is the best option for those passionate about the food business but who need help to afford to risk a huge capital. Mint from the growing demand for food delivery with impeccable services, a robust online food delivery system, and proper marketing.
Read Originally Published Blog: https://eatanceapp.com/blog/opening-a-virtual-restaurant/
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i keep thinking of the scenario if electrician were to run into ppl of her past like izzy from new years… i like imagine her going “ bunny it’s been so long you look better then ever “ and electrician is like 😀 do i know you..? due to their gaps in memory (i’m also interested how much their memory will affect them as the story progresses, i myself suffer from the issue and being young it’s kinda scary sometimes 😞)
This ask made me write something! This is set pre-RTC in the earlier days of MC’s sobriety. They’ve just moved to New Ebott here.
Read it on AO3 or read it below!
Licence
You’re leaving the DMV, of all the fucking places, when it happens.
Most people hate the DMV but you had practically skipped into the place for your eleven am appointment, overcome with joy at the thought of getting your driver’s licence back. The public transportation in New Ebott is great and your ass looks amazing after all the cycling you’ve been doing when the weather is nice, but there’s something about the independence of a car that you’ve missed. With your licence back, your employment prospects won’t be limited to the boundaries of public transport and your stamina when pedalling.
With your licence back, you’ll be able to go to school.
That’s the thing you’re most excited about. School. College. University. Whatever. You just want to learn something, to use the brain that you’ve let go to shit. You don’t even care what - at this point, with your dismal record and embarrassing results from high school, you’ll take what you can get.
You’ve wasted enough of your life and you don’t want to squander a second more.
After tucking your brand new licence safely in your back pocket, you leave the DMV, still smiling, and make your way to the bus stop. You’ll miss catching it; all the drivers are lovely and it’s nice to be driven around the city, like your own personal tour.
You’ve got time to kill until the bus arrives, so you open your phone and start scrolling through hundreds of second hand car listings.
You’re not picky; you have a tight budget and will probably hit your fair share of curbs in it anyway, but it’s nice to look at the fancier ones and dream. A convertible sounds nice; there’s a bright red one for sale, way outside of your budget. You imagine the wind in your hair, the sheer cool factor of rolling down the street with the top down. Oh, or maybe a motorbike; you had loved your stupid, ugly little scooter, and a motorbike would be even better. And you’d get to wear all the sexy leather gear. Double win.
“Oh my stars, do my eyes deceive me?”
The cold hand of panic twists through your ribcage and wraps around your heart, fingers taking hold and squeezing.
You know that voice.
You turn around.
On the sidewalk are two people staring at you with equally ecstatic expressions and you only recognise one of them.
Izzy looks… well, she looks good, you suppose, clothes fashionable and scales polished to a sheen, though you can see a few of them are missing. The spines on her head are droopy, a little paler in colour than what you remember, and there’s a beadiness to her eyes that you never noticed before.
You haven’t seen her in months but from how unfamiliar she looks, it feels more like years.
“Damn, you’re looking good!” says the man you don’t recognise.
And you know that you knew this person once, can hear the echo of his voice through the fog of your memory, even recognise his hands for the way they’d felt on your skin, but there’s something missing, something your stupid, ruined, useless brain is unable to grasp.
“Hey,” you say, affecting your brightest party-girl smile. “Long time no see.”
“Fucking hell, no shit!” the man laughs. He’s handsome, tall and very blond. “How’ve you been? You look so different.”
With each month you add to your sobriety, you’re told that with increasing frequency. You don’t really see it yourself - you feel like the exact same person most of the time. Worse, even. You’re horrible to be around when you’re in pain.
“Good, really good,” you say. “How have –”
“Dude, I thought you were dead!” Izzy crows, looking delighted. “You just disappeared, like that.” She snaps her fingers, a jarring scrape of scale-on-claw.
“Yeah, we all thought that Jesse threw the bunny out with the bath water,” the man says. His tone is light, like it’s a fucking joke or something.
This person is a stranger to you. You couldn’t even guess his name if you tried. And yet he knows about that —
You tense. Pull a smile to your face. Do your best to shake off the phantom feeling of ice crystallising on the tip of your nose. “Nah, I’m not that easy to get rid of.”
And he laughs and so does Izzy and you laugh too, even though it feels like glass in your throat, because what else can you do?
“Well, I’m glad,” says Izzy and then she sweeps you up into a hug. She smells like old perfume clinging to unwashed clothes and you can feel a faint tremble in her hands as they grip your back.
You hug back, even though you suddenly feel strange and unwieldy, like your arms aren’t your own.
I want to go home, you think. Another thing you’d be able to do if you just had a fucking car and hadn’t lost your fucking licence in the first place.
Izzy pulls back but then the man swoops in to take her place. You’re pressed to the line of his body, and though you’ve probably seen it naked, touched it all over, the feel of it is foreign to you.
You let go first.
“What’re you doing in New Ebott, anyway?” Izzy asks.
“Just passing through,” you lie, because fuck if you’re letting her know that you live here now. “What about you guys?”
“Same thing,” Izzy says. “We’re crashing with Palyso at the moment, remember him?”
Nope.
“Oh, yeah, totally.”
“Yeah, good guy, really funny. Hey, he’s actually having a party tonight, you should come! Just like old times.” The stranger waggles his eyebrows at you.
You don’t need to remember the specifics to work out what he means.
“Yeah, come with us,” Izzy begs. “Everyone’ll be so happy to see you. I’ll make it worth your while, I promise.”
The itch you’re not allowed to scratch burns. It’d be so easy, so fucking easy, to say yes. What’s one night? You don’t even need to use; who says you can’t have fun sober?
The word yes sits in your mouth like a hot coal and then the memory of water, cracking with thin shards of ice, washes over it.
The desire is gutted out. Not even smoke remains.
“I’ll sit this one out,” you say.
“Aw, c’mon, bunny! You’ve gotta—“
The sound of an engine rumbles behind you and your soul sings with relief.
Thank you, timely public transportation of New Ebott.
“This is me,” you say, hoping you sound apologetic. “It was nice seeing you guys!”
You don’t wait for a reply, practically flinging yourself onto the bus. The driver gives you a concerned look - you’re a regular and most of them know you by name - but you just give her a reassuring grin, because you’re fine. You’re fine. You’re completely, one hundred per cent fine.
You take a seat near the front and stare down at your hands. You think of the way Izzy's shook. The way yours had once. The way they don’t anymore. You hadn’t noticed that until now.
God fucking damnit.
Stupid, unwarranted tears prickle hot at your eyes and worse, there’s something sharp poking you in the butt.
Fearing that you’ve sat in something that’ll rip a hole in your pants - wouldn’t that be your fucking luck - you lift your hips and grope blindly at your ass.
Oh, right.
You forgot that you wedged it in your pocket after leaving the DMV.
You look down at your brand new licence, turning the shiny plastic card around in your hands. Your own face stares back up at you.
You dig around in your purse and from the very bottom, unearth the remains of your old licence, kept purely for sentimental reasons. It’s cut clean down the middle, made unusable the moment you’d lost it, but the image of your face is still intact.
You compare the two, side-by-side. In the new one, your face is fuller and your skin smoother. Your lips have colour to them and your eyes are bright and awake, the whites white rather than bloodshot yellow.
In the new one, you’re smiling.
Huh. You see it, now.
You do look different after all.
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Dining Virtually
The way we purchase food from restaurants has changed considerably in recent years. The standard dine-in or takeaway, and sometimes a pizza delivered to your doorstep, have been rattled by the arrival of third-party delivery services like Uber Eats, DoorDash, Grubhub, and more. DoorDash leads the roster with 66% market share.
But it is not just delivery that has changed the landscape, all fueled by mobile apps and digital marketing. Restaurants have added their own twist to the saga with virtual brands. These show up on apps as nearby restaurants, but you would be hard-pressed to find them in real life, because there are no signs announcing their presence.
No, they exist only online and in a kitchen known by a different name.
Many of the big chains are doing it, like Chili’s (Brinker), Hooters, Outback (Bloomin’ Brands), Applebee’s, and Wingstop. Even children’s party palace Chuck E. Cheese does it, with their Pasqually’s Pizza.Imagine learning the next day that the pizza you had delivered last night actually came from Chuck E. Cheese. Yuck.
Denny’s has also ventured into these waters with Banda Burrito, The Melt Down, and The Burger Den. And now it has inked a deal with third-party facilitator The Franklin Group to expand these concepts across 250 franchisees in the Denny’s system.
To be fair, there has been a small shakeout in the virtual brands sector of late, with Red Robin terminating its concepts and sticking solely to its main brand. But that is not unusual in any industry for weaker concepts to be shed, and new ones to replace them.
Virtual brands allow a restaurant chain to make better use of under-utilized facilities, especially during parts of the day in which customer traffic may sag. Having complementary products can help fill out those peaks and valleys.
They also allow restaurants to test new menu items or concepts, as well as serve different markets. But in many cases, the product is pretty much the same as if you went to Hooters or Chili’s. It’s just in a different package.
Some might consider it disingenuous, even misleading, for a restaurant to employ virtual brands. Essentially, it could be considered as smoke and mirrors, and perhaps problematic if different pricing strategies are used for identical products. Imagine if CPG (consumer packaged goods) companies did that. There would be riots.
The range of food items falling into the virtual brands category is somewhat narrow, typically limited to pizzas, burgers, and wings. These travel well with readily available packaging. While the courier services will attempt to deliver just about anything—including menu items that might seep, spill, or swish around en route—it just makes matters easier if there is some standardization.
Virtual brands are not to be confused with ghost kitchens, although there could be an overlap in some instances. Essentially, a ghost kitchen is a commercial-grade kitchen at which multiple brands are prepared on shared facilities. There are variations on this as well, such as the one in Atlanta owned by Inspire Brands, and featuring the brands under its corporate umbrella, including Arby’s, Buffalo Wild Wings, Jimmy John’s, and Sonic Drive-In. DoorDash also owns ghost kitchens, which it typically leases to local mom-and-pop operators, and with whom it has exclusive delivery rights.
And if you are wondering, a food hall is kind of the same concept as a ghost kitchen, with shared food prep facilities among numerous small food service operators. It’s just that it is all visible to consumers.
Meanwhile, virtual brands continue to proliferate, much like craft breweries. They satisfy our urgings for something different. In the case of Denny’s and its burrito, burger, and patty melt brands, the food may be much the same as what you would order off the standard menu, but at least it sounds different.
You just didn’t know it. Until now.
Dr “Virtually Right” Gerlich
Audio Blog
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