One Question Friday: How Do You Scale A Ghost Kitchen Business?

**Sam Parr** (0:00)
All right, everyone, we have a quick ad for HubSpot. But I want to let you know, I actually use HubSpot and I use their sales tool, which is what this ad is for.
HubSpot sales platform, it makes it just easier to sell stuff, to do it faster, to look at your pipeline, to see what sales are gonna happen. Just prospect to cold outreach and get more customers faster and easier. Plus, it's easy to learn and free to start. So you guys can check it out, hubspot.com/sales.

**Shaan Puri** (0:39)
This is One Question Friday where we answer a grand total of one question from a listener.
One lucky listener gets to ask a question. Me and Sam are gonna give our raw, off the cuff answer. We haven't seen the question before. Jonathan has it and these are tips and they are just the tips, as I like to say. We try not to go too deep. All right, Jonathan, you want to hit us with the question?

**SPEAKER_2** (1:03)
Hey guys, my name is Brian and I'm calling about Ghost Kitchens. I've first learned about Ghost Kitchens on Pod, so thanks for that.
So I developed a model to implement a couple of Ghost Kitchen concepts into my restaurant. I had great success, lifted my margins over 450% over six months with just one of the concepts. Now, I'm looking to scale the business by offering licensing agreements for operators in other markets to use these concepts, including the branding, recipes, etc. It's very simple. You find an operator that wants a new stream and wants to do a Ghost Kitchen, and they can start slinging product within a matter of weeks. I've researched the model that much larger companies are using, where they leverage celebrities to sell these concepts. My model is better, it's cheaper, and the recipes are second to none in the space. Assuming you didn't have the following in the platform that you do, how would you go about selling this idea to restaurant operators across the nation?
Where would you start? Sidebar, I love what you guys do on the pod. Sam, I just signed up for Copy That, and I can't wait to get started.

**Sam Parr** (2:11)
Good man.

**Shaan Puri** (2:12)
So what's his name, by the way?

**Sam Parr** (2:15)
We're going to call him Joe. No, it was a I don't remember.

**Shaan Puri** (2:20)
So thanks for the question, Ryan.

**Sam Parr** (2:22)
Yeah.

**Shaan Puri** (2:23)
Two weeks in a row. We have one question and we do not know the guy's name again.

**Sam Parr** (2:26)
It sounds smart. It sounds like he's got his game plan together. But so let's recap. The business is is what?

**Shaan Puri** (2:34)
So he owned. Here's what I understood. He owns a restaurant and then he added in a ghost kitchen meeting. He created a ghost brand, which is like what that means is if you go on DoorDash or Uber Eats or one of these delivery apps, you can order from a restaurant. But there's no physical restaurant for that thing. It's just a virtual brand.
And his restaurant would then like have the packaging. So let's say my normal restaurant is Sean's Pizza.
Well then I could also have a ghost brand called Sean Silly Sandwiches and Silly Sandwich. If I get an order from Silly Sandwiches, my restaurant crew will just like package it up as a Silly Sandwich order and it'll be ready to go. And so I'm kind of running multiple restaurants out of one restaurant is the idea.

**Sam Parr** (3:16)
And why does the restaurant owner want to do that with them versus on their own?

**Shaan Puri** (3:20)
So what he said was he, I don't know if he created that ghost brand or he added that ghost brand, but he said, it improved my restaurant margins 450%.
So he forexed his restaurant's margins. So let's say a normal restaurant has, I mean, it sounds a little unbelievable, right? Like, let's say he had, I don't know, 6% margins before, you know, don't do public math, but he's saying that that basically forexed his margins. I'm not sure exactly what he's talking about here.

**Sam Parr** (3:45)
That's cool. But you know what business would be way better is, do you remember Alex Hermazi's business? That's exactly it.

**Shaan Puri** (3:51)
Gym launch.

**Sam Parr** (3:51)
Gym launch.

**Shaan Puri** (3:52)
Exactly what I was going to recommend.

**Sam Parr** (3:54)
Go ahead.

**Shaan Puri** (3:55)
Well, I think he, well, maybe you weren't going to say this. I was going to say, go listen to that episode.
What his model was, he had a gym and he was like, all right, how do I get my gym to be more profitable? And then he figured out like a sales method to get his gym. If he opened up a gym, he figured out a sales method that would get him to have a bunch of customers paying high prices and making a bunch of money on a gym.