The restaurant business is tough, with high operating costs squeezing profit margins, but a new breed of restaurateurs has found a way around expensive storefronts and difficult customers. They are opening virtual restaurants, otherwise referred to as dark kitchens, where food is prepared and delivered to diners through on-demand food-delivery platforms such as UberEATS, Mr D Food and Order In. To their patrons these restaurants exist only in the digital world, giving restaurant owners the ability to put hundreds of meals on the tables of their customers with as few as three staff members. Hellen Gqoboka, who opened Lele's African Cuisine in February, approached the opportunity cautiously, taking leave from her supply-chain management job on Fridays to open for three nights a week, cooking from her Fourways home. Months later the demand for her traditional African meals had grown to the point where she resigned to run Lele's full-time. "It was just an idea I had from identifying a n...
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