Ghost Kitchen Company Pounces on Downtown Place The place Food Corridor Folded

The 10,500-sq.-foot Wells Road Marketplace space has been vacant considering that September, and what was at the time an alluring downtown spot is not so eye-catching for the duration of COVID-19. But 4 months later, Kitchen United, a California-primarily based ghost kitchen area firm has announced it will acquire around the place at 222 N. Wells Road. The company, which entered the Chicago marketplace in late 2019 with a River North area, hasn’t disclosed when the Loop locale will debut.

© Barry Brecheisen/Eater Chicago
Ghost kitchens are coming to the former Wells Road Market room.

This transfer will broaden Kitchen area United’s shipping and delivery footprint, bringing a lot more of its brand names to Downtown Chicago. The new locale will adhere to a similar style and design as the company’s first Chicago ghost kitchen at 831 N. Sedgwick with a several crucial discrepancies, in accordance to a rep. The room will finally provide as a de facto foodstuff corridor when it unveils indoor and outdoor seating, something absent from the Sedgwick area. It’ll comprise 10 kitchen areas with a central purchase and pickup region in the center.

Both outposts will operate let clients to get meals from numerous eating places in 1 orders, paying out for it all with a person invoice. It’s a very similar method to that witnessed at Chowbus, a third party that specializes in providing Asian food stuff from Chinatown dining establishments.

There’s no term on what eating places will occupy the ghost kitchen area. The Sedgwick spot at present homes chains which include Jollibee, Portillo’s Panera Bread, Chick-fil-A, and Smokey Bones Bar & Hearth Grill — a list that stokes problems amongst some local restaurant house owners that national chains will price out smaller, impartial corporations. It’s very similar to worries encompassing genuine estate in neighborhoods like West Loop, in which only people with significant traders can find the money for house.

Although ghost kitchens and digital dining establishments existed before the COVID-19 pandemic, they’ve come to be a staple of the hospitality field due to the fact the virus shuttered dining rooms across Chicago. Kitchen United has partnered with 3rd-celebration supply firms — an additional prominent pandemic feature — this kind of as Grubhub, Seamless, Uber Eats and DoorDash. While smaller places to eat bemoan these corporations for predatory methods, like commission service fees — which are now capped at 15 per cent less than a Chicago ordinance — Kitchen United and other related businesses welcome them.

A spokesperson states to hope a lot more information, including an opening date, in early February.

Kitchen area United Blend, 222 N. Wells Avenue, Scheduled opening date is unidentified.