For more than 15 years, Markus Pineyro has been in the business of developing and growing brick-and-mortar restaurants.
The veteran restaurateur behind the innovative Dallas taqueria Urban Taco as well as the Hook Line & Sinker seafood concept at one point had multiple locations across East Texas, including a high-profile outlet at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport.
But after a while, he said, the business of opening restaurants became an exercise in diminishing returns.
“What I came to realize toward the end of that stretch in the brick-and-mortar space was that the risk-reward formula for restaurants was sort of broken,” he said in an interview with Restaurant Business.
During the pandemic, Pineyro began to see a new opportunity in the fast-growing business of ghost kitchens. He had long been a believer in third-party delivery (“I love Uber Eats,” he confessed) and liked the idea of being able to open a restaurant with less of an upfront investment. But he was not entirely sold on the traditional ghost kitchen model, which usually involves renting kitchen space in warehouse-like facilities that can be off the beaten path.
“I didn’t want to just rent spaces and kitchen stalls and suites,” he said. “We wanted to control the vertical.”
Nor was he interested in churning out what he calls “minimum viable product”—cheap food that’s easy to make—with little in the way of hospitality.
“We don’t want to just wait for third-party orders to come in. We’re moving the needle in separate directions.”
His ideas culminated in Oomi Digital Kitchen, a 2,250-square-foot ghost kitchen slated to open later this month in Dallas. From one kitchen, Oomi will serve 11 brands, including sandwich chain Which Wich and local chicken sandwich slinger Flyrite, as well as Urban Taco. It will fill in the gaps with virtual brands that Pineyro created using SKUs from the other concepts.
A co-packing agreement with Aramark-owned meal delivery service Good Uncle will provide a key third revenue stream. Oomi will be producing thousands of prepared meals for Good Uncle each week, providing steady cash flow that it can reinvest into the business.
“We don’t want to just wait for third-party orders to come in,” Pineyro said of the diversified approach. “We’re moving the needle in separate directions. We want to be the highest-grossing ghost kitchen by square foot in the country.”
Oomi will offer a mix of existing concepts and virtual brands.
Oomi will attempt to address some of the challenges facing traditional ghost kitchens, such as a lack of visibility and a dependence on costly third-party delivery orders. It will have a colorful storefront and interior meant to welcome customers, and its menu is engineered to hold up in transit.
Pineyro is already well-versed in navigating the crowded world of third-party delivery marketplaces. At Urban Taco, he discovered that by investing in marketing and promotions on those platforms, he was able to significantly increase sales and negotiate lower delivery commissions. He plans to do the same at Oomi.
“As much as people hate Uber Eats and DoorDash as restaurant operators, I think that’s like cracking the code for me,” he said.
“We want to build a lifestyle brand, which I think is something some of these other companies haven’t been able to do.”
Oomi is also eyeing group orders and batch deliveries as additional, high-margin sales channels. Urban Taco already does a brisk catering business, and Pineyro wants to continue that at Oomi while upping the ante with more variety.
“Instead of offering just one restaurant like I have right now in my brick-and-mortar, I can go out and offer six different restaurants, eight different restaurants, and offer optionality for these 100-, 200-person lunches,” he said.
It’s also setting up a network of pickup lockers at apartment buildings and office complexes. Tenants can order from Oomi before an appointed time—noon for offices and 7 p.m. for apartments—and pick up their food at the lockers. Batch deliveries allow Oomi to keep delivery fees flat and as low as $2, Pineyro said.
Oomi will have ordering kiosks and a pickup area in a vibrant interior. “We want it to be an experience within itself to come into Oomi.” Pineyro said.
Though it will ultimately act as an umbrella for other concepts, Oomi wants to look and feel like a stand-alone brand of its own. It will have its own listing on third-party delivery apps, for instance, where customers can order from all of its restaurants at once.
“We want to build a lifestyle brand, which I think is something some of these other companies haven’t been able to do,” Pineyro said. “I want people to wear our T-shirts.”