What are hybrid restaurant models ?
A hybrid restaurant model combines multiple outlets, services, and dining experiences into one establishment.
A hybrid restaurant need not combine two locations that provide prepared meals. It could be a quick service restaurant and an ice cream store, a coffee shop in front of a cloud kitchen, a cafe that has been opened within a library, etc.
In the past few years, restaurants have undergone some radical creative changes. Experimenting with the location and type of restaurant and setting up and running them has become very popular.
The most popular hybrid restaurant concepts
If you’re considering the hybrid concept for your restaurant, here are some of the typical implementations you may adopt:
1. Quick service by day, full service by night
In this system, restaurants serve breakfast and lunch as counter service or grab-and-go options before switching to full service for dinner. If you want to attract both daytime and nighttime customers, this style will help eateries make the most of their available area.
2. Cafe and Lifestyle Store
The most common type of restaurant outlets are cafes. They are little restaurants that provide light food and drinks. Cafes are now more recognised for their aesthetics and Instagram-worthy decor. Lifestyle retailers are the best candidates to take advantage of this.
In Western nations, lifestyle cafes are still a relatively new concept. Luxury department stores have their own on-site cafes and restaurants for customers, including Selfridges in London and Macy's in New York. They offer a variety of selections and food of the highest calibre. This is an excellent approach to encourage customers to linger longer in the business and make larger purchases of both food and goods!
3. Bookstore Cafe
It is said that public libraries are diminishing in number. Book lovers are finding fewer and fewer nooks to curl up with a book and enjoy a cuppa coffee apart from their home. A bookstore cafe is a great way to turn your cafe into a hybrid model.
You can either partner up with a bookstore and open an in-house cafeteria there or open your independent cafe and build a small library there. Book readers tend to spend long hours in the same place and hence that is also a good way to multiply your billings.
4. FSR and ghost kitchens
A ghost kitchen is also known by many other names, such as a delivery-only restaurant, virtual kitchen, shadow kitchen, commissary kitchen, cloud kitchen, or dark kitchen. It’s an off-premise kitchen facility, usually operated by a third party, that prepares food for takeout or delivery.
Ghost kitchens can serve a single restaurant or multiple brands. Ghost kitchens are usually adopted by restaurants looking to expand their service locations without investing in additional infrastructure. The restaurant continues to operate a full-service model in its primary locations but runs ghost kitchens for others.
5. QSR and Cloud Kitchens
The majority of the time, quick food is served to clients at QSRs. This contains foods that can be prepared in the least amount of time. Even though QSRs only need to give the bare minimum of service, they do offer certain seating places so that consumers can choose to eat in, even if it is self-service.
You can enhance your profits in this case by setting up a cloud kitchen without having to worry about adding more dining or seating locations. When compared to launching a second full-fledged restaurant, you may create an entirely separate menu and manage both with much less difficulty. Additionally, one can concentrate on dine-in and takeout, whilst the other can only concentrate on delivery.