JustKitchen is a Taiwanese start-up that was founded in 2019. Thanks to the support of several angel investors, we joined international start-up accelerator SparkLabs Taipei early last year. This April, we also successfully went public on the TSX Venture Exchange in Toronto, Canada.

What does JustKitchen do? We are a chain restaurant business, but with kitchens only. Presently, we have 16 “ghost kitchens” in northern Taiwan, servicing the majority of Taipei and New Taipei area.

After meals have been prepped in the central kitchens, they are sent to the ghost kitchens, where they are cooked, heated and packaged. The same kitchen can provide different branded meal options. When consumers uses food delivery platform and order a “Body Fit” healthy lunchbox, “Craftman’s Soul” Japanese curry rice, or “BIT” beef noodles, these meals are likely prepared by the JustKitchen ghost kitchen that is located closest to the customer’s home.

The members of the JustKitchen founding team have worked together in the restaurant industry for more than five years and have different expertise in operation, management, and finance. Some are pure investors with an interest in restaurant business. We are passionate about food and dare to dream.

Saving costs on interior decoration, rent and labor

Even before the pandemic hit, we are aware that the restaurant industry was facing the challenges of rising rents, personnel cost pressure, as well as steadily rising costs for food.

At the time, the ghost kitchen concept was just emerging. We figured that if we only rented a kitchen we could save on expenses for interior decoration and would not need to hire servers, thus halving manpower costs. Based on this assumption, we transitioned in 2019 from acting as a conventional restaurant operator to running delivery-only ghost kitchens.

Presently, JustKitchen not only partners with famous brands such as Michelin-starred restaurant Three Coins, braised pork rice chain Formosa Chang and Smith & Wollensky steakhouse, but also develops many of its own proprietary brands.

In fact, JustKitchen utilizes a lot of digital technology that the consumer does not see. For instance, a ghost kitchen might represent around 20 brands, which means that you need to use system integration to string together everything from tablets to POS-systems as well as kitchen display systems. Otherwise, you won’t be able to get a meal ready for pick up by the delivery drivers within five to eight minutes after receiving the order.

In addition, supply chain management is also important. The inventory of each ghost kitchen must be efficiently connected with upstream suppliers. Since we are a listed company, our inventory management must be very exact, and our financial statements must be transparent. Using digitized connections and system integration abilities allows us to reduce food waste, efficiently manage orders and use of space, and bring costs down even further.

Meal delivery key point: The unboxing experience

Given that we cannot provide a dine-in ambience and service situation, we found that a key point for meal deliveries is the “unboxing experience”. The packaging itself is a very good product for deepening the dining experience. It’s not about using a simple plastic box to pack a meal; it must look nice, be exquisite and environmentally friendly. JustKitchen is also striving to make a breakthrough in that regard.

The restaurant industry has seen rapid change during the past two or three years. Our team also frequently discusses just what the core values of ours are.

I studied at the School of Hospitality Business at Michigan State University and majored in business management in graduate school. By mere coincidence, I got a job in the film industry, where I oversaw movie theater site selection. After returning to Taiwan and entering the F&B industry, my work focused on preparing restaurant openings. Be it a cinema or a restaurant, the key to success is the foot traffic, and site selection has everything to do with foot traffic.

But our world has changed today. Thanks to the popularization of smartphones and mobile network, people can enjoy entertainment anytime, anywhere. They can watch the latest movies on their mobile phone and select from among more than 10,000 meals on food delivery platforms.

Finding local heroes keen to break geographical barriers

We grasped the opportunities presented by digital transformation.

We used different market research, collected different customer data, and looked for “local heroes” who wanted to break geographical barriers.

JustKitchen collaborates, for instance, with Formosa Chang; we are currently in the process of expanding business to southern Taiwan, and we hope to expand abroad in the future. This allows a restaurant with a traditional service reach and business hours to also provide meals to Taiwanese overseas for a taste of home.

While JustKitchen cannot replace brick-and-mortar restaurants, digital transformation alike, we will continue to develop customer relationship management system, interact with our customers through social media platforms, and focus on packaging and food safety.

JustKitchen is a company that originated in Taiwan. Our team continues to  make efforts to develop more “taste of home” dishes, hoping to launch them globally one day.

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Translated by Susanne Ganz
Edited by TC Lin
Uploaded by Claire Wei