How much does a London ghost kitchen really cost? A line-item breakdown

Most published "ghost kitchen costs in London" guides round everything off and quote a range so wide it is useless. Two thousand to ten thousand pounds. That tells you nothing.

A real London ghost kitchen has a known cost base, and once you have the lines you can model your menu against it.

Below is the actual monthly breakdown for two of our currently available units in SW6: KCN 5 (21 square metres, gas and electric) and KCN 7 (33 square metres, electric only).

Rent (the headline number)

KCN 5 (21 sqm, gas and electric, three gas attachment points): 2,750 pounds per month.

KCN 7 (33 sqm, electric only, larger footprint): 2,000 pounds per month.

KCN 7 is cheaper per month despite being larger because the electric-only setup limits which cuisines suit it. Wok-heavy menus prefer gas. Pizza, bakery, and electric-griddle concepts run perfectly well in KCN 7 and benefit from the extra floor space at a lower headline rent.

Services charge

Both units carry a flat 500 pounds per month services charge. That covers pest control, fire and extinguisher testing, waste and recycling, business rates, the two shared toilets, the shower, and cleaning of the common parts of the building.

Compared with the typical practice of breaking these out as separate variable lines, a flat services charge is easier to budget against and harder for the landlord to hike in-year.

Utilities (charged at cost)

Gas and electricity are sub-metered per unit and charged at cost on usage. We do not add a margin.

A typical small delivery operator running 50 to 80 covers per evening, six nights a week, currently uses about 200 to 350 pounds of electricity per month and (for gas units) about 150 to 280 pounds of gas. Heavy operators (volume fryer, two ranges constantly on) push electricity towards 500 pounds and gas above 400.

For modelling purposes, budget 500 pounds per month for combined gas plus electric in a small-to-medium delivery kitchen.

Operator-side costs (your own)

Trade waste at our hub is included in the services charge, but in many other London buildings it is not. If you are comparing units elsewhere, budget 100 to 250 pounds per month for trade waste depending on volume.

Public liability insurance for a small operator: 30 to 50 pounds per month.

Cleaning chemicals and consumables: 80 to 150 pounds per month.

Equipment maintenance reserve (set aside, do not skip): 100 pounds per month minimum. Compressors fail, fryers fail, and a ten-year-old combi oven going down on a Friday will cost 800 pounds for an emergency engineer call-out.

Per-cover economics

For a brand averaging 12 pounds per order at 30 percent gross margin, that is 3.60 pounds of contribution per cover.

To cover a 4,500 pound monthly cost base you need approximately 1,250 covers per month, or about 42 covers per day operating six days a week.

A confident single-brand operator on the platforms can hit 60 to 90 covers per day in SW6 within three to four months, which gives a clear path to monthly contribution above operating cost. Adding a second virtual brand on the same equipment moves this faster.

Costs that do not change with unit size

Some lines are flat regardless of which unit you choose.

Insurance, accounting, the platform commissions (around 30 percent of order value across Deliveroo, Uber Eats, and Just Eat), card fees, and any per-order packaging cost will be the same in a 21 sqm unit as in a 33 sqm unit.

The choice of unit really only affects rent, services charge, and how many covers you can physically produce per hour. For most single-brand operators, the smaller unit makes the better unit economics. For multi-brand operators with two or three concepts in parallel, the larger unit pays for itself within four to six months.

What is not in this breakdown

Three lines that operators sometimes forget when modelling.

First, kit financing. If you finance equipment rather than buying outright, expect to add 200 to 400 pounds per month for a 24- to 36-month term on a typical small delivery kitchen kit-out (8,000 pounds total cost). Asset finance is widely available in the UK and useful when cash is tight, but the monthly line needs modelling.

Second, packaging. Branded packaging at delivery scale runs 0.40 to 0.90 pounds per order depending on container choice. At 60 orders per night six nights a week, that is 600 to 1,300 pounds per month. Plain packaging halves that.

Third, platform commissions. The 25 to 32 percent that Deliveroo, Uber Eats, and Just Eat take is not a cost line in the rent-and-services model above, because it is a percentage of revenue rather than a fixed monthly cost. It is the largest single cost in a delivery business and needs modelling separately. A typical operator nets about 70 percent of menu price after platform fees, before food cost.