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    22 Space Ghost Kitchen Opening in Clintonville

    A new ghost kitchen is opening soon in the heart of Clintonville.

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    Los Angeles based Maker Kitchens will open High St. Kitchens next month at 2864 N. High St., the former home of Clintonville Outfitters.

    Ghost kitchens have risen in popularity in recent years. The facilities provide small, individual commercial kitchen spaces typically utilized by restaurants offering pick-up or delivery only, as well as other food-based businesses. While there’s plenty of food, a ghost kitchen is not a traditional restaurant. There’s no dine-in seating.

    Maker Kitchens opened its first location in Los Angeles in 2015 – a time before third-party delivery services like DoorDash, Grubhub and Uber Eats had grown in popularity, says Partner Yossi Reinstein. He and Bennett Goldberg initially launched the company to provide food entrepreneurs, bakers, caterers, meal prep companies and the like with health department permitted production space. Over time, as delivery services became more popular, they saw a shift with more tenants focusing on to-go orders, versus wholesale manufacturing.

    Reinstein says demand was evident from the beginning, as they quickly filled their first kitchen and continued to expand across LA and Southern California.

    “We figured every city could kind of use something like this,” he says.

    The Columbus location is Maker Kitchen’s ninth nationwide and first in the Midwest. Columbus has a number of appealing factors that brought the company eastward. Reinstein says it’s a more affordable, fast-growing market and they are intrigued by the amount of multi-family housing going up.

    “We want to be where people want to be,” he says.

    As for tenants opting for delivery, Reinstein says with 100,000 people around OSU on any given day between staff and students, “It’s a huge ecosystem that’s a mile down the road.”

    To address the traffic created by a delivery-focused operation, Maker Kitchens submitted a traffic study along with several zoning variances for the facility.

    “You’d be surprised at actually how little traffic there is coming up and down High Street in this area,” Reinstein says.

    The facility received a variance to reduce the number of parking spaces to 10, which Reinstein says will accommodate the building’s tenants, expecting that drivers for third-party delivery services will primarily utilize the unrestricted street parking in front of the building. The alley to the south of the building will also become one-way, away from High Street.

    High St. Kitchen's parking lot
    High St. Kitchen’s parking lot

    With an official opening date slated for mid-February, about 70% of the 22 available kitchens have landed tenants.

    There are three “cold kitchens” and 19 hot kitchens, equipped with 9-foot or 14-foot hoods. Each unit also includes dishwashing, prep and hand sinks, and ample gas and electric hook-ups. Tenants are responsible for bringing their own equipment (oven, stove, griddle, etc.).

    “We try to price ourselves low enough that people can afford to bring in the equipment that they need,” Reinstein says.

    That price is $2,100 to $3,700 per month for 200 to 350 square feet of kitchen space. Rent includes water, trash, janitorial, Wi-Fi and pest control, but each kitchen is individually metered for gas and electric, which are paid by the tenant. Tenants can also rent additional space in walk-in cold storage and dry storage areas.

    Reinstein says the facility has seen interest from a mix of tenants. Several are planning on focusing on food delivery, but there’s also been interest from wholesalers, bakers, caterers, and even a pet food company.

    Hoods and hook-ups are provided, but tenants will bring in their own equipment
    Hoods and hook-ups are provided, but tenants will bring in their own equipment

    To accommodate food delivery services, High St. Kitchens will have a retail space facing High Street outfitted with automated food storage lockers. When an order’s ready a business will place the food in a temperature-controlled food locker and provide a code to the individual picking up the order.

    High St. Kitchens is the second large-scale ghost kitchen to land in Columbus via a California-owned company. Columbus Food Hall on Essex Avenue is owned by CloudKitchens, which is run by Uber Co-Founder Travis Kalanick.

    For more information, visit makerkitchens.com.

    All photos by Susan Post

    The windows to the left will house a kitchen, while the right will serve as High St. Kitchen's retail space
    The windows to the left will house a kitchen, while the right will serve as High St. Kitchen’s retail space
    The kitchen's retail corner
    The kitchen’s retail corner
    A hood in a kitchen
    A hood in a kitchen
    A kitchen under construction
    A kitchen under construction
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    Susan Post
    Susan Post
    Susan is the editor of The Metropreneur and associate editor of Columbus Underground, and also covers small business and entrepreneurial news and the food scene in Central Ohio.Susan holds a degree in Communication with a minor in Professional Writing from The Ohio State University. She sits on the board of the Central Ohio Pro Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists and loves coffee, whiskey, cooking and spending time with friends and family.
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