‘Ghost kitchens’
Food-service industry’s business opportunity
OTTAWA — Before the COVID-19 lockdown, Ottawa restaurateur Nara Sok was working on bringing a new food-service industry business model to town. But while the pandemic has paralysed other small businesses in the city, it gave Sok’s plans even more urgency.
For the last year or so, Sok, who owns the pan-Asian eatery and lounge Tomo in the ByWard Market, has wanted to set up what’s known as a “ghost kitchen.” The term refers to a restaurant that doesn’t serve dine-in customers or even sells take-out, but is simply a kitchen that gets its food to customers via delivery services.
Since COVID-19 forced restaurants to shut their dining rooms in mid-March and pivot to serving only takeout or delivery, Sok thought there was no better time to divide up Tomo’s kitchen and turn it into a hub for several smaller businesses that would rent space and sell their wares via Uber Eats and SkipTheDishes.
“We’ve always been looking into this and planning pre-COVID. But this was the gentle nudge we needed to accelerate our growth plan,” Sok says.
“COVID has provided the perfect opportunity and motivation to launch this project that has the potential to revolutionize the approach to underutilized commercial kitchens,” he says.
Currently, Tomo offers its sushi, some soups, some stir-fries and other items for pickup and delivery. But within his kitchen, Sok has also spun off the more focused delivery-only business Haus Bao, offering trendy buns filled with pork belly and more through Uber Eats.
In the next few weeks, Sok will welcome in his kitchen as tenant Banh Mi Girl, the Vietnamese sandwich business that was open for a time on Dalhousie Street, and Seoul Dog, a maker of Korean corn dogs, which were a hit, Sok, says at Asian Night Market events in Ottawa.
“Now that there’s COVID, there’s more space in the kitchen,” says Sok, noting that before the pandemic, Tomo had a 110-seat dining room to support.
Sok, who was ahead of the curve when he brought ramen to Ottawa in 2014 with his Elgin Street restaurant Ginza, is convinced that Ottawa’s COVID-struck restaurant community could foster more than a few more ghost kitchens. In particular, underused hotel kitchens could host delivery-only businesses, he suggests.
Sok says he has a list of vendors who are interested in selling their food items through the big delivery services, including an Ottawa pho purveyor and Skuish Cookies, which has a following topping 24,000 on Instagram. Given that level of interest, Sok says he plans to open another ghost kitchen downtown this year, and even other ghost kitchen locations in Ottawa suburbs in the future.
“It’s just a matter of picking the right ones (vendors). Once we get the space, we’re good to go,” says Sok.
He adds that once the constraints imposed on restaurants due to COVID-19 lift, he will be able to transition Tomo back to offering on-site dining by moving its ghostkitchen tenants to a new location.
Sok says he has seen proof of his concept with his side business Instasnacks, which is a delivery-only convenience store that he has run out of Tomo for the last year.
Instasnacks, Sok says, has seen steady growth in its sales, bringing in revenue in the thousands of dollars each month. Since COVID-19’s arrival, Instasnack’s sales have more than doubled, says Sok, who adds that he would like to bring his Instasnacks business to other Canadian cities.