A ghost kitchen — otherwise known as a dark kitchen, cloud kitchen or virtual restaurant — is a restaurant that does not provide dine-in or takeaway services to customers. It is primarily virtual and is reliant on food delivery apps, such as Grubhub, website/web portal orders and/or calls to generate sales. The global-cloud kitchen market size was estimated at $43.1 billion in 2019 and is forecast to reach $71.4 billon by 2027.

Ghost kitchens — cooking facilities that produce food only for delivery, with no dine-in or customer-facing areas — could create a $1 trillion global opportunity by 2030, according to Euromonitor. The firm predicts cheaper, faster and more reliable delivery could help this segment capture 50 percent of drive-thru service ($75 billion), 50 percent of takeaway foodservice ($250 billion), 35 percent of ready meals ($40 billion), 30 percent of packaged cooking ingredients ($100 billion), 25 percent of dine-in foodservice ($450 billion) and 15 perce