ADMS 1000 –Fall 2022 CASE STUDY – ASSIGNMENT 15% The Rise of the Ghost Kitchen INSTRUCTIONS: DATE TO BE POSTED FOR STUDENTS: Monday, October 3, 2022 – 9am – Eastern Standard Time (EST) DUE DATE: Friday , October 7, 2022 – 11:59 pm (Toronto, EST) No Extensions INSTRUCTIONS: 1. PAGE LIMIT AND FORMATTING REQUIREMENTS - Your assignment should be a maximum of 1,000 words (plus any references). The formatting allowed is as follows: • • • • • Font size: 12 point Font style: Arial Line Spacing: 2 Margins: 1-inch margins (or 2.54 cm margins) Other: On every page of your assignment you should note your Name, student # and page #. This can be done under “Headers and Footers.” (No title page is required.) 2. CONTENT – Read the case and answer the two (2) questions. Number each question. Answer both questions separately in as much detail as possible. Extensive use and visible reference to course theoretical content and case examples are expected and necessary for a satisfactory grade. For example, students must include all case examples they can find. An introduction and conclusion, however, are not required in this assignment. 3. WRITING STYLE - A formal writing style is expected. Spelling, grammar, punctuation, sentence structure and writing style will be part of the evaluation of the assignment. Point form is NOT acceptable. However, no introduction or conclusion is required. Just answer the questions like a take-home exam. 4. ACADEMIC CITATION – Students should use APA citation style for referencing. Proper academic citation of sources is required when using "another person’s ideas or writings as one’s own". York University Senate Policy on Academic Honesty found on the following web site: https://secretariat-policies.info.yorku.ca/policies/academic-honesty-senate-policy-on/ A link to examples of the APA citation style is available on the York University web site: https://www.library.yorku.ca/binaries/BG/instruction/academic_intergrity_handout _1oct2015.pdf External research for this Assignment is not required, and no additional points will be awarded for extra research. While you do not have to cite the case for this Assignment, all answers and explanations should be in your own words. Any “direct quotes” or exact phrases from the case should be in quotations. TURNITIN is the tool you will be using to upload your Assignment into eclass. Turnitin is also used to detect plagiarism; that is, using ideas that are not your own and not properly referenced. Students caught not referencing (i.e. plagiarizing) will receive a mark of zero (0). 5. ASSIGNMENT SUBMISSION AND DUE DATE - The mini-case assignment must be submitted on-line in Turnitin in elass no later than Friday, October 7, 2022, 11:59 pm Eastern Standard Time (EST). See below for submission method. 6. SUBMISSION METHOD – Please submit your assignment through Turnitin in eclass in Word file format. If your document file cannot be read, it will not be marked and will be considered late, so please do not use alterative file types such as Apple pages. 7. TECHNICAL ISSUES: If you have problems using Turnitin, please contact your Instructor first. You may need to email your Assignment to your Instructor ONLY IF you are going to miss the deadline. Please give yourself extra time to submit your assignment (in advance of the due date and time) to anticipate any potential technical problems. It is still the student’s responsibility to ensure his or her assignment is submitted on time. 8. PENALTIES - Late assignments will not be accepted. Page Limits: There are no penalties for going over the page limit. However, anything beyond 1,000 words will not be marked. 9. MARKING RESULTS - The turnaround time for grading papers is about 1 week. You will be able to access your graded paper in Turnitin once marked. An Announcement will be posted in eclass when papers and marks are available. The Rise of the Ghost Kitchen Food delivery apps like Uber Eats, DoorDash and Grubhub are starting to reshape the American food industry. As more people order food to eat at home, and as delivery becomes faster and more convenient, the apps are changing the very essence of what it means to operate a restaurant. No longer must restaurateurs rent space for a dining room. All they need is a kitchen — or even just part of one. They can then hang a sign inside a meal-delivery app and market their food to the app’s customers, without the hassle and expense of hiring waiters or paying for furniture and tablecloths. Diners who order from the apps may have no idea that the restaurant doesn’t physically exist. The shift has popularized two types of digital culinary establishments. One is “virtual restaurants,” which are attached to real-life restaurants like but make different cuisines specifically for the delivery apps. The other is “ghost kitchens,” which have no retail presence and essentially serve as a meal preparation hub for delivery orders. Many of the delivery-only operations are in the early growth stage, but their effect may be farreaching, potentially accelerating people’s turn toward order-in food over restaurant visits and preparing home-cooked meals. Uber and other companies are driving the change. Since 2017, the ride-hailing company has helped start 4,000 virtual restaurants. Since the pandemic began many restaurants have pivoted to providing takeout and delivery. It’s a move that shows no signs of diminishing, even as they reopen for dining in one form or another. To accommodate this increased demand they are depending more and more on various types of offpremises kitchens. Several companies are counting on the continued growth in the ghost kitchen trend. Their inventory is so-called ghost kitchens — off-site meal-preparation facilities that are untethered from physical restaurants. They predate the virus but are multiplying now and taking many new forms. Ghost kitchens allow restaurants to outsource the making of their takeout and delivery meals without cannibalizing the stoves, walk-ins and prep areas needed to serve seated diners outdoors or in. With national reach, they’re also promising to expand a restaurant’s footprint and brand recognition beyond the immediate neighborhood. i Reef Kitchens is one of these. It was started in June 2019 in Miami, using parking lots and garages. Today it has some 4,500 parking sites across the country where it is installing mobile pods — roughly the size of shipping containers — that it calls kitchen vessels. The same space might house cooks preparing delivery orders from several restaurants, whether the food is Indian, Mexican, Italian or burgers. Reef has three modular kitchens up and running in New York City. It expects to more than double that by the end of the year and hopes to get its nationwide total to 300. When a customer orders online through the website of a Reef Kitchens client or one of the delivery apps like UberEats or Postmates, the information goes to Reef, but the customer never interacts directly with Reef (though the service is adding pickup at some of its locations). The company started before the virus hit, but Carl Segal, the chief operating officer, said that what it is doing feels more urgent now. For a restaurateur, establishing a second kitchen would be expensive given the costs of rent, construction, utilities and staffing, but with Reef, the restaurant has no upfront expenses. “It doesn’t cost them anything,” Mr. Segal said. “We enter into a partnership with them, we keep the revenue and pay them a royalty percentage every month.” ii One of the main drivers of the growth of the ghost kitchen market is the changing cost structures of the foodservice environment. Ghost kitchens push restaurant cost structures toward delivery rather than in-person dining, and the reduction of employees that comes with a delivery-focused model can significantly bring down rent and staffing costs for restaurants and grow thin margins, he said. For example, 60% of the cost of a Starbucks latte represents the cost of rent and staffing according to Euromonitor, which cited data from Financial Times. As delivery becomes less expensive and ghost kitchens grow and become more centralized, reducing food delivery times in the process, restaurants could find financial gains in optimizing their business for off-premise rather than dine-in experience. iii The ghost kitchen concept is establishing itself in the Canadian restaurant industry as well. Joey Restaurants opened a ghost kitchen at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Surrey, B.C., on May 14 and another in a stationary food truck in Brampton, Ont., on May 21. It did so partly to provide jobs to staff who could no longer work as servers in its dining rooms, as well as create new jobs, said Rupert Martin, vice-president of culinary. Ghost kitchens offer a quick, cost-effective method, Martin said, noting brick-and-mortar restaurants are very expensive to open and can take months, whereas ghost kitchens can be opened in weeks. Before the coronavirus, the off-premises channel accounted for less than 10 per cent of the commercial restaurant industry's revenue. It is predicted it to make up close to 20 per cent of a fullservice restaurant operator's business once the pandemic ends. iv Questions: (Total marks: 50) 1. With reference to the Classical and Behavioral schools of management thought, identify which school of thought you believe is the best approach for managing ghost kitchen employees. Use relevant course theory and case examples to support your view. (30 marks) 2. Describe how the ghost kitchen reflects the four defining characteristics of an organization. (20 marks) Endnotes: i Isaac, Mike. (2020, August 14) The rise of the virtual restaurant. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/14/technology/uber-eats-ghost-kitchens.html ii Fabricant, Florence. (2020, September 1) As food deliveries boom, so do ghost kitchens. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/01/dining/ghost-kitchens-delivery-pandemic.html iii Baskett, Emma. (2020, July 10) Ghost Kitchens could be a $1T global market by 2030. RestaurantDive. https://www.restaurantdive.com/news/ghost-kitchens-global-market-euromonitor/581374/ iv Sagan, Aleksandra. (2020, June 24) Restaurant chains jump on ghost kitchen trend to boost sales during Covid 19. The Canadian Press. https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/restaurant-chains-jump-on-ghost-kitchen-trend-to-boostsales-during-covid-19-1.1455687
