The Rise of Dark Kitchens: How Delivery Platforms Are Changing the Food Industry
Recently, I was feeling peckish and checked Just Eat, only to discover that North Road in Durham now boasts four Korean takeaways.
A quick look at Deliveroo revealed four more:
That means eight Korean takeaways have seemingly popped up in the same small part of Durham this year. Now, I know this area well—two of my favorite pubs are nearby, as is the main city bus station. If eight new Korean restaurants had actually opened, I would have noticed.
What’s even stranger? They all appear to sell identical food, with near-identical photos:
Eight seemingly identical restaurants, selling exactly the same dishes, opening at the same time, in the same location.
Weird.
These are Dark kitchens.
What Are Dark Kitchens?
Ghost kitchens (also known as ghost kitchens) are commercial kitchens designed exclusively for preparing food for delivery via online platforms. They are particularly common in urban areas where restaurant spaces are expensive.
They’ve always existed as an industry secret. One of the best Indian takeaways in East Durham wasn’t a restaurant at all—it was just a kitchen in a scruffy shed somewhere near Horden, cleverly marketed to seem like a mysterious hidden gem.
But the rise of digital platforms like Just Eat, Deliveroo, and Uber Eats has transformed dark kitchens into a rapidly expanding network across the UK. The COVID-19 pandemic further accelerated the trend, as lockdowns forced consumers to rely on food delivery services.
Why Are Dark Kitchens So Popular?
The appeal is obvious.
For businesses, the model significantly reduces overhead costs. There’s no need for a dine-in space, expensive city-center retail units, or front-of-house staff. Instead, businesses can operate out of lower-cost industrial units on the outskirts of town, where planning regulations are less restrictive.
For example, renting retail space in Durham City requires A3 planning permission and comes with steep lease costs:
But move half a mile outside the city center, and you can rent an industrial unit for a fraction of the price. If you’re willing to go beyond the DH1 postcode, costs drop even further.
I have a suspicion that Durham’s dark kitchens are mostly around Dragonville industrial estate, but we would need someone to track Just Eat and Deliveroo drivers.
With no dine-in customers, businesses can better control staffing levels and match workload to demand. The ultimate goal? To build a brand that can be scaled up, franchised, or sold.
Branding is crucial. Without a physical presence, a restaurant loses the usual ways to signal quality—there’s no stylish interior, no ambience, no personal service. Instead, businesses rely entirely on digital branding. That’s why, in Durham, we’re seeing multiple “restaurant” brands emerging from the same kitchen, testing which names and concepts gain traction.
The Dark Side of Dark Kitchens
But there’s a catch.
These businesses are almost entirely dependent on third-party delivery platforms, which take significant commission fees. Margins can be razor-thin, so careful cost management is essential.
Deliveroo, for instance, operates its own network of dark kitchens under the brand Deliveroo Editions. These are delivery-only kitchens that rent space directly from Deliveroo. While this reduces setup costs for operators (with rent, utilities, and some marketing support included), commissions are high.
Deliveroo is tight-lipped about where these kitchens are located, but after speaking with industry contacts, I’ve identified sites in London, Glasgow, Bristol, and Leeds. Some well-known brands, like Dishoom, use these facilities. Deliveroo claims to have dark kitchen sites in five countries—I’m fairly certain Spain is one, as a contact of mine worked with one in Madrid.
The advantage for Deliveroo? The more “restaurants” operating out of a single location, the more efficient deliveries become for their riders.
For businesses, success in a Deliveroo Editions site depends on maintaining a strong platform rating (4.5 stars or higher) and a good relationship with their Deliveroo account manager. Without physical signage or street-level marketing, businesses rely entirely on platform-driven promotions to attract customers.
It’s very common also, for bigger brands to run multiple ‘restaurants’ out of one kitchen- for example Las Iguanas produce takeaways under the Las Iguanas, Bang Bang Burrito, Bangtan and Little Bao Boy brands all from the same kitchen. Wingstop is another one, with a burger restaurant nobody has heard of – because it doesn’t exist. It’s a sneaky way of getting more revenue out of the kitchen but quite manipulative to the customer.
I am pretty sure that the Indian take away in East Durham flew under the radar of environmental health and all other forms of officialdom. But the new Corporate dark kitchens, all meet environmental health standards, which is why bureaucrats like them. Easier to tick off 5 or 5 kitchens in one visit than traipse round loads of different sites with not enough manpower
The real downside of Uber Eats, Just Eat and Deliveroo is that it is becoming impossible for takeaways to do business without them. At it’s worst this is Corporate rent seeking behaviour, charging businesses to serve their customers. The more they expand into “Editions” concepts the more they control the market.
Last Orders
So, sadly, there aren’t eight Korean restaurants on North Road in Durham after all.
Next time I’m on my way home from the pub, it looks like I’ll just have to settle for a bag of chips.