It is about one pm at Westlands, a busy commercial center in Nairobi a few kilometers from the CBD. Here, several offices have taken advantage of the calmness and quiet environment to run their businesses. The business center is usually flooded during the official hours of getting to work and leaving in Kenya (8 am and 5 pm). Most people break for a lunch break at one pm before the buildings take in the human traffic into more hours of work, keyboard, mouse, and meetings.

For enterprisers, this gives a well-centered market, especially in basic commodities like food. So how do all these people get their meals? There are various classes of people as well as hotels selling food for different budgets. However, Kenyan urban towns have a huge population in the middle class which most businessmen targeting mass-market penetration consider.

Kune Food, one of Henson Kitchens clients, which has been in the news for its cloud kitchen venture, targeted this market. The model was basically to prepare meals from their “dark/cloud kitchens” and use riders to deliver to clients upon request. This was enabled by the use of mobile apps as well as mobile money transfer for eased operations.

What are cloud kitchens/ dark kitchens?

• A ‘ghost’, ‘virtual’ or ‘dark’ kitchen, is a facility that has kitchen equipment to prepare delivery-only food. They are designed with equipment capable to produce food but not with the space of a physical restaurant in which to serve it.
• With changing times and trends, adopting a delivery-only model to order food for delivery or pick up has become the norm. Fast food is becoming a major trend due to convenience and affordability. This needs a special kitchen fit-out designed to fit the often small spaces but to deliver unlimited orders.
• This business relies on online food aggregators as well as their websites and mobile apps to generate orders and engage with clients. They often have delivery riders or partners with mobile transport apps, apps like Bolt, Uber eats, Jumia, Glovo and Deliveroo which has made it more convenient and hastened business growth.
• The food delivery market, which includes the Deliveroo rivals JustEat and UberEats as well as traditional takeaways, is expected to increase by 10% a year to £53bn by 2020, according to the market analyst NPD. Deliveroo’s sales soared sevenfold to £128.6m last year as it expanded its operations in the UK and overseas, to 25,000 restaurants in more than 140 cities and 12 countries.
• Covid 19 guidelines and movement restrictions as from 2020 saw many people adjust to staying indoors and avoiding movement.  According to the Goldstein market intelligence report, the global cloud kitchen market was valued at USD 700 million in 2018 and it is further expected to grow at a CAGR of 17.25% through the forecast period of 2017-2030.

In Conclusion, investors looking to join the dark kitchen business and delivery business model need extra caution in handling regulation issues for smooth business and to seek a professional guide, especially in mobile shops, and container kitchen fabrications to get the best kitchen fit-out.

Designing and organizing a mobile kitchen needs extra attention to optimize the available space. Henson Kitchens is a professional company in Kenya that specializes in commercial kitchen design, fabrication, supply, and maintenance.

Henson Kitchens designed and fitted kitchen equipment in container kitchens for KUNE foods that were positioned in select spots in Nairobi. This served to ease distribution and customer access for their clients before the outlet closed. Container kitchens offer a flexible base for design and kitchen fitting that are mobile in case of changing locations for your dark/cloud kitchen business.