Season Three of The Future of Food examined how restaurants can survive during pandemic times. We looked for answers in many ways. Lee Schneider interviewed Sean Lynch, who set up a listing service for restaurants that were doing takeout and deliver. He spoke with Grace Guber about her experiences as a server and with Lex Gopnix-Lewinski about what it was like to own a restaurant in the last year. Creg Fielding, CEO of Fusionware, threw some light on how the supply chain works and how it failed during the pandemic. Brian Wang brought his perspective as a science writer and Atul Sood discussed how ghost kitchens may be the future of some restaurant experiences.

Ghost kitchens have been helping out many a restaurant during the pandemic. These are kitchens — often without a storefront or public face — that make the food you’re taking out from your favorite restaurant.

Atul Sood is the Chief Business Officer at Kitchen United, a venture-backed startup that is deploying “ghost kitchens” to help restaurant brands serve their customers without necessarily having a storefront or physical restaurant. He knows his way around food delivery partnerships: He was the Director of Business Development for McDonald’s Global Digital organization.

Some ghost kitchens have names you know — they’re the outsourced takeout division of your neighborhood place. Others exist only as ghost kitchens — they are not attached to a physical restaurant at all.

Ghost kitchens were around before the pandemic and they will be around afterward. Just as chefs used to try out their ideas in food trucks that went from neighborhood to neighborhood, restauranteurs with experience and those new to the game are using ghost kitchens to test their culinary ideas on the public. It could be that your favorite restaurant of the future may not have a physical location that you can visit. It will be an entirely take-out experience.

Brian Wang joins Lee Schneider on the show today. Brian is a Co-Founder, futurist thought leader and a popular science blogger with one million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.