Skip to content
MarketScale
‹ Back to IndustriesFood & Beverage

What’s Inside New Hybrid Ghost Kitchens

Food is serious business. Now, on The Main Course, host Barbara Castiglia will invite insiders on the front lines of food to share their expertise, strategies, and forecasts for navigating the ever-changing restaurant industry.   Ghost kitchens are now part of the vernacular, as delivery became the go-to for restaurants during the pandemic. Those trends, coupled with the…

This story was produced through MarketScale. See how Food & Beverage teams put it to work with Customer Stories & Case Studies.

Promoted content from The Main Course on MarketScale.

Share

Get featured

Want to get featured in MarketScale Food & Beverage?

Create a free MarketScale workspace and get your company's expertise featured across our Food & Beverage coverage. No credit card, no demo required.

Request an invite

Food is serious business. Now, on The Main Course, host Barbara Castiglia will invite insiders on the front lines of food to share their expertise, strategies, and forecasts for navigating the ever-changing restaurant industry.

Ghost kitchens are now part of the vernacular, as delivery became the go-to for restaurants during the pandemic. Those trends, coupled with the lack of commercial kitchen spaces for food startups, led Camilla Opperman and Samantha Slager to launch Nimbus, a hybrid between a traditional commissary kitchen and a ghost kitchen. The Main Course host Barbara Castiglia spoke to them about the concept and the future of ghost kitchens.

Opperman explained the business. “We offer premium commercial kitchens for lease. We have ghost kitchens dedicated to delivery options. We also have shared spaces that are rentable by the hour or day.”

Their space, located in NYC’s lower east side, also has a front of house perfect for dinner parties and studio kitchens to create content.

The idea for the concept came to Opperman when she searched for a kitchen to start a concept. “None of the solutions were appropriate, so I pivoted to solve the problem.”

Opperman met Slager through a mutual friend, and her background in sales and marketing made the pair a great team. “I was blown away by the idea and opportunity,” she added.

They opened the kitchen during the pandemic, which turned out rather well. Slager said, “People came to us who had lost their spaces as well as operators that were figuring out delivery and needed to expand to new markets.”

Besides providing the facility and infrastructure, Nimbus also connects members to preferred partners to help with marketing, ingredient procurement, and labor.

In discussing the future of the segment, Opperman believes things look bright. “Ghost kitchens like Nimbus are the future. The old restaurant infrastructure isn’t set up for delivery. With in-dining experiences coming back, restaurants will need space to facilitate delivery. Our front of house is also designed for events. Its’ the best of both worlds.”

A New Episode is Served Up Every Tuesday and Thursday!

Follow us on social media for the latest updates in B2B!

Twitter – @MarketScale

Facebook – facebook.com/marketscale

LinkedIn – linkedin.com/company/marketscale

The Main Course

Part of this channel

The Main Course

Where restaurant and food industry insiders talk real business.

Visit the channel

Your experts belong here

Every story in MarketScale Food & Beverage starts with a company putting its plant managers, quality leads, and R&D teams on the record. Buyers are already reading this topic. The only question is whose experts they find.

Processors and grocery buyers vet suppliers hard, and your operations people are the ones who can satisfy them.

Get your team featuredSee how it works15 minutes, straight to a calendar.

Follow Food & Beverage Insights

Get new expert content in your inbox.

Food & Beverage: are you visible to AI?

Before they reach out, Food & Beverage buyers ask AI engines which vendors to trust. See how AI describes your company today, and where competitors show up instead.

Free workspace

You just read one Food & Beverage expert. Your company is full of them.

This article was produced through MarketScale. The same platform turns your plant managers, quality leads, and R&D teams into the articles, video, and social content Food & Beverage buyers are searching for. Create a free workspace and see it with your own people. No credit card, no demo required.

NPS +73 · 1,000+ creators · 38+ countries

What you get, free

Your own MarketScale Studio workspace
One video edit a month, on us
AI writing, editing, and publishing tools
In-platform coaching to learn the system

More Food & Beverage Insights

Restaurant kitchen automation is moving from robots to connected equipment

Restaurant kitchen automation is moving from robots to connected equipment

Sweetgreen says its Infinite Kitchen can assemble up to 500 bowls an hour and costs $450,000 to $550,000 per unit. Foodservice Equipment and Supplies reports 2024 Kitchen Innovations Award winners are adding sensors, AI and tighter links to POS, KDS and delivery systems. The operational shift is toward automation that removes steps and variability, not fully staffless restaurants.

  • 01The KI Awards trend is integration, robotics that season and pack, and pizza systems designed around POS, KDS and delivery feeds, which is where automation stops being a demo and starts being a production line.
  • 02For operators with small footprints or volatile staffing, equipment that recognizes food and auto-selects cook programs is becoming a training strategy as much as a cooking strategy.

Sep 8, 2026

GLP-1 users cut food spend

GLP-1 users cut food spend

PwC and Acosta Group data show GLP-1 users are spending less on food and changing what they buy. PwC reported GLP-1 users spent about 11% less across most food categories, and the steepest pullbacks were in sweet and salty snacks and baked foods. Acosta Group found users report buying more fresh and high-protein items while reducing purchases of sweets, salty snacks and sugary beverages.

  • 01The bigger operational risk is mix, not just volume: surveys from PwC and Acosta Group point to snack and sugary beverage softness alongside protein and produce lift, a pattern worth validating in loyalty and POS data.
  • 02Pack architecture becomes a supply-chain decision: when 47% of users report smaller portions (PwC), right-sizing case packs, planograms, and menu portions can prevent margin leakage from shrink and waste.

Sep 6, 2026

Restaurants are buying more customer tech even as visits stay 7% below 2019

Restaurants are buying more customer tech even as visits stay 7% below 2019

U.S. restaurant operators are budgeting more customer-facing technology for 2026, with 60% prioritizing customer experience investments, according to the National Restaurant Association data reported by Restaurant Business. The push comes while average chain restaurant occasions remain 7% below 2019 levels, a gap Restaurant Business says has persisted even as kiosks, digital menu boards, loyalty programs, and AI tools proliferated. Bar & Restaurant’s reporting on high-volume staffing shows why the timing matters operationally: with labor still tight and peak periods exposing process friction, operators are trying to shift guest decisions earlier, improve scheduling discipline, and free managers to coach instead of firefight. The near coin-flip in consumer sentiment, 41% saying tech improves hospitality versus 38% saying it hurts, indicates deployments that reduce staff burden without making the guest feel “sent to a screen” will be the ones that hold up in 2026 traffic conditions.

  • 01A useful benchmark for 2026 tech budgeting: 60% of operators plan to invest in customer-experience tech, but that category only outpaces front-of-house tech (54%) by six points, so many programs will compete for the same dollars and implementation bandwidth, according to the National Restaurant Association data reported by Restaurant Business.
  • 02The metric mismatch is becoming a planning risk: Restaurant Business says kiosks can lift sales per transaction, but operators still lack a clean way to measure whether customer-facing automation quietly suppresses visits, especially when chain occasions are already 7% below 2019.
  • 03For high-volume concepts, the highest-ROI “tech” may be workflow discipline: Bar & Restaurant reports operators leaning on forecasting, clear labor rules, and centralized reservation and add-on decisions to reduce peak-hour conflict, which can make customer tech feel like convenience rather than a substitute for hospitality.

Sep 1, 2026

Explore More Food & Beverage Insights

Read more expert perspectives from across Food & Beverage.

Browse Food & Beverage Hub

For B2B teams

Your experts could be publishing here

Stories like this one run on content MarketScale captures from real practitioners. See how your team's expertise becomes coverage in Food & Beverage and beyond.

Book a 15-minute demo

Or call us. No forms required. We pick up. 214-945-2512