The Hill Food Co. – A Ghost kitchen concept has officially launched in St. Louis, Missouri, with early signs of success.
ST. LOUIS, MO (STL.News) A ghost kitchen concept has officially launched in St. Louis, Missouri, with some early signs of success. The parent company refers to itself as a food hall.
The concept is attractive to almost everybody that has seen the facility. It is a new concept in a state-of-the-art facility. It has spent millions of dollars to rehab an old, outdated commercial building into this hall of opportunity for restaurant owners and entrepreneurs.
The concept is that the facility focuses on the property for the restaurant owners. The restaurant owners focus on quality food and marketing their menu online for delivery or pickup.
The restaurants do not need servers, bussers, bartenders, or hostesses. The restaurants need cooks, prep, and packaging. The restaurants have fewer responsibilities and fewer distractions and can concentrate on the most important factors: good food with quality service.
Ghost kitchens protect the public by providing daily oversight, ensuring health and safety standards are followed to protect their business license and multi-million dollar investment.
The owner of the property, the ghost kitchen, focuses on taking the food from the kitchen to the processing center to pass it off to the customers who choose to pickup or to the delivery drivers. Additionally, the ghost kitchen ensures health and safety standards are met to comply with all federal, state, protect the public, and public as well as to protect their multi-million dollar investment.
I have personal experience with the facility because my significant other has a kitchen in this facility. She was the first to open and the first kitchen to receive an online order. She has 30+ years of experience in the restaurant industry and currently owns four restaurants that are successful. She has spent the first week in this location cooking and setting up the kitchen. She loves the simplicity of the concept because it allows her to do what she loves; cook food.
Therefore, I have witnessed the benefit to the restaurant owners. Furthermore, I see the benefit, which is that the restaurant has oversight.
The local government inspects and has standards that must be met, and the owners of the ghost kitchen have employees on-site daily to ensure the facility complies with those health and safety procedures.
When you compare this to individual restaurant facilities, they have no oversight other than health inspections once a year or even less the local government’s accountability is not sufficient to supervise thousands of restaurants in this metro area on a regular basis.
After personally engaging in this concept and assisting my significant other, I have discovered that this is the biggest benefit to the public. Health and safety standards commonly go overlooked in individual restaurant locations.
Additionally, a benefit for startup restaurants is that this concept makes it more cost-efficient to open a business and allows the restaurant owner to focus on the most critical aspect of the business; customer satisfaction.
Real estate has gotten cost prohibitive to many startups as property owners continue to raise rent due to unrealistic values, which is hurting small businesses and startups.
Currently, out of 22 kitchens, they have leased 9, according to reliable sources, and showing the space to new prospective restaurant owners daily.
Restaurant Partners:
- Bandana’s BBQ – Opening August 10, 2023
- Bougie Bites
- Deer Creek Coffee
- De Palm Tree Jamaican Cuisine – CLICK to read the article about opening at The Hill Food Co.
- Jose Penos Mexican Restaurant
- STL Indian Kitchen
- Thai Kitchen – Hampton – 20+ Year History with High Online Reviews – CLICK to view the company website
- Wok-O Taco
- more to come soon.
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