DoorDash Kitchens adds location featuring dining area for first time

DoorDash Kitchens, the company’s ghost-kitchen concept, is ramping up with a new location that calls itself a “delivery-forward food hall.”

What’s cooking? Alongside pickup and delivery, the Brooklyn location features a dining area—a first for the concept. DoorDash is also considering adding outdoor seating, Insider reported.

• The space features five restaurants to start, including sushi restaurant Domodomo and chicken-and-pie concept Pies ’n Thighs. Pizza chain Little Caesars, for one, will enter the kitchen later on.
• This marks the third DoorDash Kitchen location and first outside of California, where the two existing kitchens operate on a “rent-a-kitchen” model.

“We heard from our restaurant partners that being able to serve Brooklyn—some for the first time like Domodomo—is a helpful way to reach more customers and test a new location without committing to a brick and mortar,” Ruth Isenstadt, senior director of DoorDash Kitchens, told Nation’s Restaurant News.

Stepping up: As more shared- and ghost-kitchen startups like CloudKitchens and Kitchen United have expanded to include self-serve kiosks and lounge seating, it seems DoorDash wants to catch up.

• The ghost-kitchen market is projected to hit $71.4 billion by 2027, up from $43.1 billion in 2019, per Hospitality Technology.
• “There’s a shift in consumer dining habits in ready-to-eat meals, and one of the things consumers really liked was the ability to order across concepts. If I want Chinese and you want barbecue, we can get that on the same ticket with the same delivery driver,” Atul Sood, chief business officer for Kitchen United, told NRF.

According to Insider, DoorDash is also on track to reopen a previously tested pop-up ghost kitchen in San Jose, where the company’s employees cooked and sold items from multiple restaurants.—JS