I still maintain that grocery stores (particularly Wal-marts) are going the way of last-mile warehouses for pickup orders and delivery. That means fast food will follow suit and gradually shut off the kitchen from the outside, and eventually dining rooms. Then a real estate sell off because you don’t nee as many locations if you’re just a hub for UberEats. McDonald’s will be the first on that considering their holdings which features some prime spots they picked up decades ago.
My local dynamic is that people who need food want it in an hour from placing order, hot and fresh. Delivery people aren’t occupied exclusively by one client, they chain at least a couple of orders at all times. Local kitchen, although overwhelmed with delivery orders, would stay, and it’d die long after dining rooms, IMHO. There’s the option to move into random buildings instead of taking visible locations like what eateries try to do, and it works great for a lot of delivery-only sushi gigs I ordered from, but it greatly depends on the time window of order2delivery, building codes and cooking standards, etc. For them, the last mile includes cooking locally for it to be swift enough, even if “cooking” can be completely robotized. The most critical problem keeping local kitchens inescapable is that a cold burger won’t make a good burger if reheated, same with many other fastfood things, and before that’s taken care of, I believe fast food chains wouldn’t be able to drop kitchens close to the client, they’d only be dismantled if they and their neighbors comfortably exhaust the demand thus triggering areas consolidations.
My local dynamic is that people who need food want it in an hour from placing order, hot and fresh. Delivery people aren’t occupied exclusively by one client, they chain at least a couple of orders at all times. Local kitchen, although overwhelmed with delivery orders, would stay, and it’d die long after dining rooms, IMHO. There’s the option to move into random buildings instead of taking visible locations like what eateries try to do, and it works great for a lot of delivery-only sushi gigs I ordered from, but it greatly depends on the time window of order2delivery, building codes and cooking standards, etc. For them, the last mile includes cooking locally for it to be swift enough, even if “cooking” can be completely robotized. The most critical problem keeping local kitchens inescapable is that a cold burger won’t make a good burger if reheated, same with many other fastfood things, and before that’s taken care of, I believe fast food chains wouldn’t be able to drop kitchens close to the client, they’d only be dismantled if they and their neighbors comfortably exhaust the demand thus triggering areas consolidations.