Mise En Place at Scale

Kitopi's Model for Fast, Finished Food

Relative to in-house kitchens, the optimized logistics, workflows, and design provided by ghost kitchen networks (GKNs) slash turnaround time for order fulfillment. Kitopi, a Dubai-based GKN, presents the gold standard for production speed by touting a consistent eight-minutes order-to-driver. That’s cooking and packaging a complete purchase, not just a single item. Achieving such speed depends on a tech-enabled process inaccessible to integrated restaurants (those with in-house kitchens). GKNs operate food prep via advanced manufacturing practices rather than those of a traditional chef’s kitchen. Doing so provides an efficiency unlock similar to that which “Made in China” did for consumer brands during the aughts. 

To operate Mise En Place at scale, Kitopi leverages a system of central production units that feed into smaller, localized kitchens. The French phrase for “everything in its place” empowers precise kitchen actions via a meticulous standard for ingredient preparation and organization. Handling the bulk of labor- and time-intensive operations, Kitopi’s “hub kitchens” are large warehouses equipped for this prep: marinating meats, mixing sauces, chopping vegetables, and partially cooking items. Each hub delivers to fifteen or so “satellite kitchens” for finishing and assembly. Centralized prep minimizes slow-down. Satellite kitchens don’t set-up or clean-up, don’t manage ingredients, and don’t make large quantities. Workers are, instead, freed up to maximize order throughput without regard to the time-intensive steps bogging down integrated kitchens.

In-kitchen workflow is divisible into three segments: order management, assembly, and kitchen layout. An order might look like: Steak Frites, Soppressata Pizza, and Kid’s Quesadillas. Upon receipt, this order is disaggregated and sent to separate stations on the line. Satellites are organized by workflow not by brand, so the pizza is sent to the pizza station rather than the “Sicily’s Finest” station. In action, this means that one oven might be used for five restaurants - who collectively benefit from the streamlining. Despite their disparate requirements, all items are handled individually, timed for instantaneous completion, and processed in parallel. The quesadilla finishes at the same time as the steak - and both finish in under eight minutes.