{"id":5407,"date":"2021-01-08T21:17:00","date_gmt":"2021-01-09T03:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/live-gordon-food-service.pantheonsite.io\/taco-joes-ghost-kitchen-born\/"},"modified":"2023-02-01T14:19:39","modified_gmt":"2023-02-01T20:19:39","slug":"taco-joes-ghost-kitchen-born","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gfs.com\/es-us\/ideas\/taco-joes-ghost-kitchen-born\/","title":{"rendered":"Taco Joe\u2019s: A Ghost Kitchen is Born"},"content":{"rendered":"

How do you update an 83-year-old, fourth generation ice cream and burger operation to face what\u2019s ahead in 2021? For Valley Dairy in western Pennsylvania, you launch a ghost kitchen featuring tacos.<\/p>\n

It was a decision rooted in pandemic necessity, the future and growth opportunity. Even though Valley Dairy made a pre-pandemic push to utilize third-party delivery services, only 3% of business at Valley Dairy\u2019s 11 restaurants<\/a> was takeout.<\/p>\n

Then came the COVID-19 shutdown, and all of the business became off-premise. Once the dining room opened at limited capacity, about 15% of takeout business remained. For the restaurant team and Gordon Food Service, that signaled an opportunity to shift some thinking.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re known for our ice cream, but we sell breakfast, lunch and dinner too,\u201d says owner Melissa Blystone. \u201cWe were joking  that my grandfather would be surprised that we were looking at tacos and ghost kitchens. On the flip side, he\u2019d be so dang excited that we were doing everything we can to make money during these crazy times.\u201d<\/p>\n

A ghost kitchen emerges<\/h3>\n

So how did Valley Dairy get from ice cream to tacos? Blystone and Director of Operations Tom Webb reached out to Sales Representative Phoebe DiBello, who teamed up with Business Solutions Specialist Christine Morgan to create a checklist with stages of starting a ghost kitchen.<\/p>\n

The checklist provided a step-by-step plan to create a business visible only to hungry people searching on third-party delivery platforms. It covered product development, brand development, creating a menu and devising a strategy for opening.<\/p>\n

One goal was to create a small menu that utilized many products already on hand. Two ideas that emerged were burgers and tacos.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou guys were pushing the tacos because not a lot of people in our area do tacos,\u201d Webb says. \u201cWe thought we could stand out in that avenue and not poach from our Valley Dairy customer base.\u201d<\/p>\n

With that, Taco Joe\u2019s <\/a>was born. <\/p>\n

A ghost kitchen menu for today and beyond<\/h3>\n

Gordon Food Service Culinary Specialist Ralph Scurci helped create a menu that consists of three basic tacos\u2014beef, pork and chicken\u2014and specialty tacos that include a Nashville Hot Chicken Taco and a Boom Boom Pork Taco for those who like the heat. <\/p>\n

There also will be a Chipotle-like taco bowl, a made-to-travel deconstructed nacho platter that customers can build at home, and sides like beans, rice or cheese. And for dessert, there\u2019s churros with caramel sauce.<\/p>\n

The menu is completely different from the menu in the restaurant. The goal was to capture a different subset of customers Valley Dairy currently isn\u2019t reaching,\u201d Morgan says. \u201cThat lends itself well for now and for post-pandemic.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a plan Webb and Blystone think will work. When customers come back, they don\u2019t want the ghost kitchen to vanish. \u201cWhen we\u2019re back open and running 100 percent, having the ghost kitchen, having our regular restaurant delivery, we can be over the top with sales,\u201d Webb believes. \u201cWe definitely want to make this successful so it stays with us in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

Creating a ghost kitchen footprint<\/h3>\n

For now, Taco Joe\u2019s will operate only from the newest Valley Dairy location in Belle Vernon. The food will be assembled inside the restaurant\u2019s kitchen and delivered to areas in a radius served by DoorDash or Uber Eats.<\/p>\n

The prospects for success look good. When doing a search for tacos online, the only other restaurant that came up was Taco Bell. While it\u2019s impossible for Valley Dairy to compete with a national chain\u2019s advertising budget, the next step will be to market Taco Joe\u2019s as a local alternative.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow that they have the concept, they need to work on building a social media presence, create an app and start marketing as a standalone restaurant,\u201d DiBello says. \u201cThey need to work with their staff to build some organic following, potentially looking at some paid advertising to get a premiere listing as they lead up to their grand opening.\u201d<\/p>\n

The move to a ghost kitchen was accelerated by the pandemic, but a bigger off-premise footprint was likely approaching with changing consumer desires.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re so operationally minded that we needed Gordon Food Service\u2019s expertise on how to approach this,\u201d Blystone says. \u201cIf everything works out great, Taco Joe\u2019s will be at all 11 restaurants.\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A western Pennsylvania restaurant looks to the future with a novel concept.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":5408,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-running-your-business"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nTaco Joe\u2019s: A Ghost Kitchen is Born<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/gfs.com\/es-us\/ideas\/taco-joes-ghost-kitchen-born\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"es_ES\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Taco Joe\u2019s: A Ghost Kitchen is Born\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A western Pennsylvania 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