QSR December 2022

DEPARTMENT OUTSIDE INSIGHTS

Don’t Ghost FoodSafety Virtual kitchens can’t take a backseat to industry-wide best practices. B Y H A L K I N G

foodservice establishments must ( and are reg ulated by local and state health departments ). The CDC currently does not track and report foodborne disease outbreaks caused by ghost kitchen foodservice. However, because of the rapid growth of this business, there is a strong probability it will contribute to the burden of foodborne diseases. In the absence of any CDC or state reports, there is considerable social media chatter about illness and food quality issues specif ic to delivery from ghost kitchen brands. Thus, now is the time for all opera tors in the space to ensure food safety, including those that license their brand and menu items. So what are some food safety risks unique to ghost kitchens and the best practices to reduce them? We’ll focus on kitchen design and location. The FDA food code is used to regulate ghost kitchen establishments, permitting, plan review, and health inspections. It does not spe cifically address ghost kitchen operations, but does outline food safety requirements of mobile foodservice establishments based on a menu prepared and served in mobile and fixed food trailers as extensions of brick-and-mortar estab

Ghost kitchens can be a bit of a wild west for food safety. Don’t let that be the case.

T he pandemic devastated the industry, and the new digital transformation of the food sector has changed the business for years to come. One of the models that has grown signifi cantly is the ghost kitchen; accelerated by the continued expansion of off-premises sales. Digital ordering and deliveries in the U.S. have grown 300 percent faster than dine-in sales since 2014. These delivery-only venues may also include mobile kitchens designed for pickup only ( food trucks or trailers where food preparation occurs and delivery service pickup is completed ). It’s a model expected to grow domestically from $43.1 billion in 2019 to $71.4 billion by 2027. Foodservice establishments continue to cause the greatest num ber of foodborne diseases outbreaks every year in the U.S. Before COVID-19, as reported by the CDC in 2017, 60 percent of all cases. Today, when you look at the most currently available data, nothing has changed. There were 184 outbreaks ( or 61 percent of the total ), 3,074 illnesses, 337 hospitalizations, and three deaths in one year. Ghost venues operate like any other foodservice kitchen, prepar ing and serving foods for immediate consumption based on orders, and they follow the same state version of the FDA food code all

lishments. These include requirements for personal hygiene, food preparation, temperature/equipment requirements, safe potable water and sewage use, physical facility design for food safety, chem ical safety, servicing, and enforcement of compliance. In turn, if a ghost kitchen business location with or without a mobile foodser vice component follows these rules, the risk of causing a foodborne disease outbreak would be very low. Nevertheless, because of the digital transformation of the industry, and its current model for loca tion selection, setup, and operations, there are some inherent risks associated with ghost kitchen operations that should be considered. Traditional permitting of a restaurant for food preparation and sales to the public are based on the menu items prepared in the facil ity and the design ( called safe f low of foods ) to ensure food safety. Likewise, the inspections of the operations to ensure the public health, and to ensure compliance to food code, are also based on the menu and facility design. If menu items and preparation meth ods change, there can be new food safety risk introduced into the kitchen beyond what the kitchen was designed to produce. This is augmented if the volume of sales is too large to CONTINUED ON PAGE 63

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DECEMBER 2022 | QSR | www.qsrmagazine.com