Welcome to Ghost Business - where business ideas go to launch 🚀 or die ☠️

Ghost Kitchen

Got munchies?… A friend of mine was sued by PepsiCo. Okay, that’s a dramatic start but her idea was fantastic.

She started a Ghost Kitchen (delivery only kitchen) of Hot Cheetos based meals; burgers, fries, grilled cheese, and mozzarella sticks, etc. She called it Muncheetos

It was BRILLIANT! 

Hot Cheetos has a cult following and these easy to make food items would sell like hot cakes. You can whip up the orders in a short of time from a commercial kitchen and a delivery driver would come and get it.

Low up front costs ✅ 

Marketable food ✅ 

Low risk food biz ✅ 

Until you get sued… Luckily all she had to do was rebrand. Now called Funky Bun (if you’re in Dubai check them out!)

So this got me thinking… Could this be done in the US? How much would it cost to start and how much could you make? Let’s saddle up and ride down Ghost Business ave 👇

The End Goal

Handling the heat… Having a ghost kitchen (or 3) is the goal here. Easily marketable, low cost, fast(ish) food is the best way to make money.

Having a fine tuned social media to funnel food orders through would be your bread and butter. Buy just enough product to sell out daily would also increase scarcity and demand.

“Instagrammable” food images are key 🔑 

Having influencers eat your food and share pictures will blow this up and you’ll be swimming in the dough 🍩 

Once you have a great marketing strategy, you “open” up other delivery only restaurants in the same kitchen. Constantly tweak your menu to only have 5 amazing items (more than 5 choices give customers decision fatigue) and you can scale this to nearly any city in the world 🌎

The MVP (Minimum Viable Product)

More Oreos… Don’t worry, I’ve already planned out this MVP for you. It’s called MOREO; Oreo based desserts, made to order. (change it to COOKS if when you get sued)

But why Oreos? They already have a huge following and desserts are:

• A low cost food item ✅ 

• Great for impulse buys ✅ 

• Can be pre-prepped aka frozen until ready ✅ 

But how much would this whole thing cost to start?

• Commercial Kitchen Rental 4days/week: $800/mo or $27/day

• Ingredients for 200 orders per day: $500/day

• To go containers: $50/day

• Door dash 30 day trial: Free

• Website & marketing $120/mo or $4/day

Daily expenses: ~$581

Daily income from 200 orders at $6/item: ~$1200

That’s $700 profit per day 🤯 

If you’re open 4 days a week (Thurs-Sun), you’ll make $11,200/mo

Scaling Up

Full plate… Now that you have a working cash flowing Ghost Kitchen 👻 , it’s time to scale up! But what do you do?

Three options:

1. Hire some folks to man the kitchen and prep orders 👨 

2. Open up another location with the same menu 🌎

3. Offer a new menu in the same location 🍔 

The obvious route to me would be to hire. Remove yourself from the kitchen to work on another menu.

Other ways to grow:

• Start to get a network of foodies together to spread the word of your delicious food

• Do a popup

• Partner with an event

Viability:

1 [building spaceships] 🚀 to 5 [easy peasy] 😊 

Proof is in the oreo pudding… Having manned a food truck myself, this can be a grind. But having a delivery only service would make this much more manageable.

If you have a decent love for food and marketing, you can grow this business incredibly fast. There’s always demand for good food and if you can win the war for appearance of folks scroll through their door dash app, you’ll be swimming in an Oreo cream bath.

(As usual each business will have it’s own setbacks, and it’s all about the execution and consistency rather than just having the idea 😉)

It’s a great day to be great!

Love, Mike

 👋 

Ghost