Some pedestrians in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood assume Moonbowls is a furniture store.
At first glance, you can understand why they’d make that mistake. The restaurant’s front of house does more closely resemble a scene out of a home and garden catalog than a quick-service establishment. Instead of tables and chairs, there’s a couch, a round mirror and a tasteful circular rug. Where you’d expect to see menu boards, there are shelves lined with framed pictures and succulents.
Without any exterior signage (which I’m told is coming soon), the big clue that Moonbowls is a place to buy food are two self-service ordering screens sitting on a small counter. A quick peek behind a floor-to-ceiling shelf, meanwhile, reveals the tell-tale stainless steel fixtures of a commercial kitchen.
Moonbowls customers can order from touchscreen kiosks. / Photograph courtesy of Salted
If the design choices seem curious, bear in mind that Moonbowls is not like other restaurants. Though it has more than 30 locations, this outlet on a busy street on Chicago’s North Side is just its second brick-and-mortar. The rest of the system is “virtual,” a network of online storefronts and listings on apps like Uber Eats and DoorDash serviced by delivery-only ghost kitchens.
Virtual restaurant brands blew up during the pandemic, when so much business shifted to off-premise. Few, if any, have branched into physical locations like Moonbowls has. Its Chicago brick-and-mortar stands somewhere between a traditional restaurant and a virtual one. It has a front-of-house, but no dining room—all meals are packaged for to-go. Guests can order at the counter, but on a tablet rather than from a person—and many order online in advance.
Moonbowls is owned by a company called Salted, a Los Angeles-based restaurant startup with a whole roster of similar concepts, including Ginger Bowls, Lulubowls and Califlower Pizza.
The brands were engineered to work in small, delivery-only kitchens. They have catchy names, sleek packaging and easily replicable menus. Besides existing almost entirely online, they share a focus on vegetables and gluten-free ingredients, with flavors inspired by Asian cuisine.
Founded in 2014, Salted had just six locations when COVID-19 arrived in 2020. But it has grown quickly since, in part thanks to the pandemic-fueled delivery boom. In 2021, it landed a $9 million private-equity investment and now expects to have 80 locations by the end of this year—many of them in facilities operated by CloudKitchens.
A pedestrian walks past Moonbowls in Chicago on Wednesday. / Photograph by Joe Guszkowski
Salted wants to do for potstickers and rice bowls what Warby Parker did for eyeglasses: Sell directly to customers online and use delivery networks to fulfill their purchases, at least initially.
“We’re using a playbook that we’ve seen already work in other e-commerce categories that have proven it’s possible to build deep real relationships with customers online,” said Salted CEO and co-founder Jeff Appelbaum.
And, like Warby Parker and other direct-to-consumer companies have done, Salted is venturing out into the physical world to meet people there, too.
Its ghost kitchens work as distribution points, but “more fully branded experiences can deepen the customer relationship and help solidify the brands,” Appelbaum said.
That is what Salted is hoping to do at Moonbowls’ Chicago restaurant, which opened June 1. It joins two other locations in the city, both of which are in ghost kitchens.
Kitchen Manager Tanisha Kilpatrick moved over from one of those ghost kitchens to help run the brick-and-mortar. One of the big differences, she said, is the opportunity for staff to add a “human touch” to the customer experience.
“People still long for that interaction,” she said. Customers can make modifications or ask questions, which they can’t typically do at a ghost kitchen. “This concept gives them more peace of mind.”
Because Moonbowls customers are used to ordering online, a lot of sales still come in that way, Kilpatrick said. But the storefront in a former sushi restaurant at 2464 N. Clark St. does generate walk-ins.
“A lot of our customers don’t even know what Moonbowls is,” she said. Newcomers are often drawn in by its many gluten-free and vegan options, which she said are hard to find in the neighborhood.
“Gluten-free has definitely made it an interesting concept for people,” she said.
The kitchen is actually smaller than Salted’s ghost kitchen in nearby River North, where Kilpatrick worked previously. But it functions the same: Orders flow into a tablet in the back and a printer spits out tickets. There’s a sautee station and an assembly line for the concept’s colorful bowls. During the lunch hour earlier this week, the tablet dinged every five or 10 minutes with an incoming order.
“It does get hectic,” Kilpatrick said, and unlike in the ghost kitchen, she is responsible for greeting guests and handing them their orders as well as cooking.
Though the restaurant is branded as Moonbowls, it also offers the menus of Lulubowls and Ginger Bowls. A concept called F#ck Carbs is also listed at the address. Soon, it will start selling cauliflower pizzas and other Salted brands. It’s multiple restaurants in one, and yet Kilpatrick said it usually requires only two or three employees to run.
Moonbowls serves bowls and other dishes inspired by Korean cuisine. / Photograph by Joe Guszkowski
Salted’s ghost kitchen locations target a $1 million annual run rate, Appelbaum said, and every outlet that has been open for 12 months is profitable. The company has thrived in a delivery-only format, an area where many other restaurants have failed.
He said it comes down to having a unique product, plus operational excellence.
“If you don’t have both those two, then it’s hard,” he said.
The company appears to have struck a chord with Moonbowls, the “crown jewel” of Salted’s portfolio. Appelbaum compared the Korean veggie bowl concept to a pop song: “Even if you haven’t heard it before, you can sing along with it.”
When customers see Moonbowls pop up on their delivery apps, he said, it’s supposed to feel both familiar and unique at the same time. That’s not an easy balance to strike. But virtual bands allow for some trial and error.
“The model affords us, and can afford others, to test and be wrong more than you’re right,” Appelbaum said. “You don’t need to be right that many times to be very successful.”