How Reef Technology became a major disruptor in the ghost kitchen industry
In 2019, Reef Technology — formerly known as ParkJockey — was a parking facilities company offering a digital solution to paper tickets for parking customers across 5,000 lots and garages in North America. Two years later, Reef has become one of the most recognized names in ghost kitchen technology.
Since Reef launched its virtual restaurant arm, Reef Kitchens, at the end of 2019, ghost kitchens have evolved from a technological curiosity to a restaurant industry mainstay and a cheaper way to create and expand brands without the financial ties of a brick-and-mortar presence.
Although there are multiple virtual restaurant companies contributing to the massive growth of delivery-only restaurants, Reef has become one of the top names in the industry, using its expansive network of parking lots and garages to rapidly expand a fleet of 5,000-plus ghost kitchen “vessels” in the nooks and crannies of major cities.
In the last quarter alone, Reef has announced partnerships with six restaurant brands: Milk Bar and Wendy's in August, 800 Degrees fast-casual pizza chain and Bennigan's in September, and Del Taco and TGI Fridays in October.
With the Wendy's partnership, Reef will be helping to open as many as 700 delivery-only restaurants over the next five years in the U.S., Canada and the U.K., with 50 virtual restaurants to open before the year's end, as Wendy's CEO Todd Penegor told investors in August that the quick-service chain is “still very early in the nontraditional development journey.”
800 Degrees, meanwhile, is using a new Reef-powered ghost kitchen network and automated build-your-pizza kiosks from Piestro to stretch its reach to 500 delivery locations. Since it's harder to replicate wood-fired Neapolitan pizzas en masse virtually, crust and classic pizzas will be available via the ghost kitchen restaurants and robotic kiosks, while 800 Degrees brick-and-mortar restaurants will stick to its pizzas made via wood-fired ovens.
More recently, Reef's partnership with TGI Fridays marks the first global casual-dining brand in the technology company's growing portfolio. The casual dining chain is prepared to launch 300 virtual restaurants internationally over the next five years — nearly half of its existing 700-restaurant portfolio. Roy Blanchette, CEO of TGI Fridays, described Reef as a “launching pad” for spreading the Fridays brand to underserved markets.
But with thousands of virtual restaurants slated to open under the Reef umbrella over the next several years, the question remains: How is it growing so fast?
“We don't see ourselves as disruptors,” Alan Philips, chief creative officer with Reef, told Nation's Restaurant News. “When we partner with brands, we are helping that brand do what they do in the best way possible in this new world. … We've built a network of hundreds of ghost kitchens and hundreds of retail locations. I don't know of anyone who's going to be able to take brands and bring them onto the platform and expand them in such a capital efficient and neighborhood centric way.”
One of the reasons Reef is growing so quickly is its ability to operate in unorthodox locations. Whereas many virtual restaurants operate solely out of commissary kitchens or the back of pre-existing brick-and-mortar locations, Reef's vessels are large kitchen trailers the size of shipping containers that are not bound by real estate limits. They're a hybrid of food trucks/carts and traditional restaurant operations models.
This unique model isn't without its complications. Reef was recently flagged by the New York City Health Department while operating within the murky area between restaurant and food truck/cart. Insider recently reported that Reef Technology has temporarily voluntarily suspended all operations of its vessel kitchens. The company had been operating its kitchens — for which there is no health permit type in New York City — under temporary food truck permits while in the process of obtaining long-term health permits for its modular kitchens. Reef's brick-and-mortar locations are still in operation in New York City.
“Reef Kitchens is operating in compliance with New York City regulations from fully-permitted brick-and-mortar locations,” a Reef spokesperson told Nation's Restaurant News. “We continue to work collaboratively with regulators on ways to permit our innovative model, which seeks to reinvent urban spaces in a way that improves cities and neighborhoods with modular structures.”
Although Reef has claimed that the company ceased operations of its modular kitchens before any reprimand from the New York City Health Department, Insider obtained a statement from the Department of Health that suggests otherwise.
"The Health Department determined that multiple establishments operating under DBA (Doing Business As) 'Reef Neighborhood Kitchen' were violating numerous New York City health and safety requirements,” the New York City Health Department said in a statement, adding that the company has “agreed to cease operations” to ensure that it is in compliance with city regulations. The Health Department did not respond by press time to request for comment.
There is only one location of Reef Kitchen listed on the New York City Health Department restaurant inspections ratings. Umami Burger, operated under Reef Kitchen, is listed as “not yet graded” but has multiple violations under New York City health rules and regulations, including “food from an unapproved source” and “inadequate personal cleanliness.”
“Reef is very proud of its record of serving safe food in a clean environment,” the company said in a statement. “If you look at the total score of violations Reef has received, we are a negligible fraction compared to most major restaurant operators in New York. Our commitment to high standards is abundantly clear.”
Navigating local health department regulations is not a new operating challenge for Reef. The virtual restaurant company typically works with city regulators to figure out how to work around traditional permit and licensing regulations, which don't take into account its unique operating structure. In fact, Reef has said that other cities like Miami have already begun working on new regulations to make room for ghost kitchen vessels and mobile kitchens. In New York City (along with other markets), it was easier for the ghost kitchen company to enter the market using temporary vendor licenses (which often have fewer regulations than long-term licenses).
Reef expects that permits for its temporarily shuttered kitchen vessels will be approved and that the shuttered locations will be back up and running by the end of the year, pending any COVID-19 related delays.
Despite these growing pains, Reef's army of kitchen commissaries and mobile kitchens continues to expand rapidly. Calling its portfolio “an ecosystem of diversity” with room for diverse types of foodservice brands, Philips believes that Reef has only just begun.
“I see our platform as a way for restaurateurs and brands to be as creative as possible,” he said. “We're just enablers to help make those dreams come true. … We can scale physical businesses like digital businesses — like taking a brand from one location to 100 locations in less than a year. This is unheard of in the world of hospitality.”
So, what's next? Although Philips would not divulge forthcoming partnerships, he sees independent restaurants as just as crucial to the future Reef ecosystem as larger chain restaurants with goals of 500-plus virtual locations. But as the concept of virtual restaurants continues to evolve, the definition of a virtual restaurant brand might change.
“In the future, let's say you're sitting and watching a Netflix show and you see John Favreau and Roy Choi making a pizza on-screen, and you click on your screen and then that pizza is delivered to you in 30 minutes or less from the Reef platform,” he said. “As the market saturation becomes deeper, these capabilities are going to become real and the marriage between the digital and physical restaurant world will be extraordinary.”
Reef Technology 如何成为幽灵厨房行业的主要颠覆者
2019 年，Reef Technology（前身为 ParkJockey）是一家停车设施公司，为北美 5,000 个停车场和车库的停车客户提供纸质车票的数字解决方案。两年后，Reef 已成为幽灵厨房技术中最知名的名字之一。
自从 Reef 于 2019 年底推出其虚拟餐厅部门 Reef Kitchens 以来，幽灵厨房已从一种技术好奇心发展成为餐饮业的支柱，以及一种创建和扩展品牌的更便宜的方式，无需实体店的财务联系在场。
尽管有多家虚拟餐厅公司为外卖餐厅的大规模增长做出了贡献，但 Reef 已成为该行业的顶级品牌之一，利用其庞大的停车场和车库网络，迅速扩大了 5,000 多个幽灵厨房的队伍主要城市的角落和缝隙中的“船只”。
仅在上个季度，Reef 就宣布与六个餐厅品牌建立合作伙伴关系：8 月的 Milk Bar 和 Wendy's，9 月的 800 Degrees 快速休闲比萨连锁店和 Bennigan's，以及 10 月的 Del Taco 和 TGI Fridays。
正如 Wendy 的首席执行官 Todd Penegor 所说，通过与 Wendy 的合作，Reef 将在未来五年内帮助在美国、加拿大和英国开设多达 700 家仅提供外卖服务的餐厅，并在年底前开设 50 家虚拟餐厅8 月份的投资者表示，该快速服务连锁店“仍处于非传统发展之旅的早期。”
与此同时，800 度正在使用新的 Reef 驱动的幽灵厨房网络和来自 Piestro 的自动构建你的比萨亭，将其覆盖范围扩展到 500 个送货地点。由于很难大规模复制燃木那不勒斯比萨饼，外壳和经典比萨饼将通过幽灵厨房餐厅和机器人售货亭提供，而 800 度实体餐厅将坚持使用燃木烤箱制作的比萨饼.
最近，Reef 与 TGI Fridays 的合作标志着这家科技公司不断增长的产品组合中的第一个全球休闲餐饮品牌。这家休闲餐饮连锁店准备在未来五年内在国际上开设 300 家虚拟餐厅——占其现有 700 家餐厅组合的近一半。 TGI Fridays 的首席执行官 Roy Blanchette 将 Reef 描述为将 Fridays 品牌推广到服务欠缺市场的“发射台”。
但是，随着数以千计的虚拟餐厅计划在未来几年内在 Reef 的保护伞下开业，问题仍然存在：它是如何增长得如此快的？
“我们不认为自己是破坏者，”Reef 的首席创意官 Alan Philips 告诉 Nation's Restaurant News。 “当我们与品牌合作时，我们正在帮助该品牌在这个新世界中以最好的方式做他们所做的事情。 … 我们已经建立了一个由数百个幽灵厨房和数百个零售点组成的网络。我不知道有谁能够将品牌带到平台上，并以这种资本高效和以社区为中心的方式进行扩展。”
Reef 增长如此迅速的原因之一是它能够在非正统的地点开展业务。许多虚拟餐厅仅在小卖部厨房或现有实体店的后面运营，而 Reef 的船只是大型厨房拖车，其大小与集装箱一样大，不受房地产限制。它们是食品卡车/手推车和传统餐厅运营模式的混合体。
这种独特的模型并非没有复杂性。珊瑚礁最近被纽约市卫生局标记为在餐厅和食品卡车/手推车之间的阴暗区域内作业。 Insider 最近报道称，Reef Technology 已暂时自愿暂停其船舶厨房的所有运营。该公司一直在根据临时食品卡车许可证经营其厨房（纽约市没有卫生许可证类型），同时正在为其模块化厨房获得长期卫生许可证。 Reef 的实体店仍在纽约市运营。
Reef 发言人告诉 Nation's Restaurant News：“Reef Kitchens 在完全允许的实体店经营符合纽约市的规定。” “我们将继续与监管机构合作，探讨如何允许我们的创新模式，该模式旨在通过模块化结构改善城市和社区的方式重塑城市空间。”
尽管 Reef 声称该公司在纽约市卫生部门的任何谴责之前停止了其模块化厨房的运营，但 Insider 获得了卫生部的一份声明，表明情况并非如此。
纽约市卫生局在一份声明中说：“卫生局认定，在 DBA（做生意）'Reef Neighborhood Kitchen' 下经营的多家机构违反了纽约市的多项健康和安全要求，并补充说该公司已经”同意停止运营”，以确保其符合城市规定。截至发稿时，卫生部门未回应置评请求。
纽约市卫生局的餐厅检查评级中只列出了 Reef Kitchen 的一处。 Reef Kitchen 旗下的 Umami Burger 被列为“尚未分级”，但在纽约市卫生法规和法规下存在多项违规行为，包括“来自未经批准来源的食物”和“个人清洁不足”。
该公司在一份声明中表示：“Reef 对其在清洁环境中提供安全食品的记录感到非常自豪。” “如果您查看 Reef 收到的违规总分，与纽约大多数主要餐厅运营商相比，我们只是一个微不足道的部分。我们对高标准的承诺非常明确。”
了解当地卫生部门的法规对 Reef 来说并不是一个新的运营挑战。这家虚拟餐厅公司通常与城市监管机构合作，想办法解决传统的许可证和许可规定，这些规定没有考虑到其独特的运营结构。事实上，Reef 表示，像迈阿密这样的其他城市已经开始制定新的法规，为幽灵厨房船和移动厨房腾出空间。在纽约市（以及其他市场），幽灵厨房公司使用临时供应商许可证（通常比长期许可证的规定更少）更容易进入市场。
Reef 预计，其暂时关闭的厨房船只的许可证将获得批准，关闭的地点将在年底前恢复运行，等待任何与 COVID-19 相关的延迟。
尽管有这些成长的痛苦，Reef 的厨房小卖部和移动厨房大军继续迅速扩张。飞利浦称其产品组合为“多元化生态系统”，为各种餐饮服务品牌提供空间，飞利浦认为 Reef 才刚刚开始。
“我认为我们的平台是让餐馆老板和品牌尽可能发挥创意的一种方式，”他说。 “我们只是帮助实现这些梦想的推动者。 ……我们可以扩展实体业务，例如数字业务——比如在不到一年的时间内将一个品牌从一个地点扩展到 100 个地点。这在酒店业是闻所未闻的。”
下一个是什么？尽管飞利浦不会透露即将建立的合作伙伴关系，但他认为独立餐厅对未来 Reef 生态系统的重要性与目标为 500 多个虚拟位置的大型连锁餐厅一样重要。但随着虚拟餐厅概念的不断发展，虚拟餐厅品牌的定义可能会发生变化。
“在未来，假设你坐着看 Netflix 节目，你看到 John Favreau 和 Roy Choi 在屏幕上做披萨，你点击屏幕，然后披萨在 30 分钟或更短的时间内送到你手上来自 Reef 平台，”他说。 “随着市场饱和度的加深，这些功能将成为现实，数字和实体餐厅世界之间的结合将非同寻常。”
