Old-school Kroger pivots from generic groceries to techy "ghost kitchens"
The good kind of ghosted... Grocery hero Kroger is getting into the Halloween spirit with the debut of two "ghost kitchens" — aka, delivery-only restaurants. Kroger is pivoting from generic pasta and frozen pizza to e-nnovation with Casper-like kitchens.
Left on red (cabbage)... Kroger's collabing with ClusterTruck (lol), a ghost restaurant service that'll set up its kitchen in two Kroger stores. It's a smart, low-lift way for Kroger to test out the prepped meals delivery/pick-up concept. Meals have more profit-potential than groceries: Bread + avocado = $3. Avocado toast = $12. Womp.
- What Cluster does: Basically, all the work. It makes the menu, orders ingredients, cooks the food, and delivers. Kroger shoppers get free delivery
- What Kroger does: It gives Cluster 1K sq ft of space in its 160K sq ft stores to make the morsel magic happen. Niiice.
The lines between grocery and restaurant are getting hazy... Kroger is a grocery chain trying to get into prepped meal delivery. Ironically, restaurant delivery services like Doordash are now getting into grocery delivery, too. We've seen this trend accelerate in the pandemic — restaurants closed for in-store dining, and started selling grocery items like olive oil and bread to survive. Now companies are seeing that the more food-related-anything you can drop at a doorstep, the better.