Deliveroo Editions ‘delivery-only’ kitchens is giving Australian’s even more reason to never leave their couch

FORGET the idea of eating out at your favourite restaurant. This Australian first by Deliveroo means you won’t have to eat near strangers ever again.

A HOLE-IN-THE-WALL set up in an alley off Chapel Street in Melbourne, this “restaurant” isn’t your standard operation.

There are no tables. No waiters or printed menus and instead of a single kitchen there are two cooking stations shared by seven different eateries.

This communal kitchen will churn out food orders for some of Melbourne’s most popular restaurants, catering for people who’d rather eat their favourite dish from the couch than surrounded by strangers.

It’s called Deliveroo Editions and it’s the first “delivery only” kitchen of its kind in Australia.

Your favourite restaurant just not as you know it. Picture: Supplied

For those who’ve yet to give the home delivery app a whirl (don’t worry, I hadn’t tried it until recently) here’s the general gist.

You download the app, scroll through cafes and restaurants in your area which have partnered with the platform and are able to deliver to your area. You order, you pay, you wait, your food arrives and you eat. Simple.

And it’s not just your local Thai or pizza joint using these apps. Some hatted restaurants, like Sake and Three Blue Ducks in Sydney, who would’ve once ignored a delivery option like this, are taking a bite out of the service.

To date, restaurants use Deliveroo as a way of getting their food to customers in the fastest way possible. But the game-changing concept of Deliveroo Editions brings various restaurants to a single bricks and mortar location to cook together under one roof, and prepare food for delivery purposes only.

Messina gelato, Baby pizzeria, Chin Chin and even Melbourne burger kings 8bit will be cooking out of the same kitchen, and dishing up their food to Deliveroo riders waiting for their order to be called.

“We invite restaurant partners to take up occupancy in these kitchens … they can contribute in terms of fit out, or they don’t have to and if they don’t, the commission is a bit higher,” CEO and co-founder of Deliveroo, William Shu, told news.com.au.

Is this the end of dining out?

“They don’t rent a kitchen … our core business is we take a commission on each order. In this set up, these guys [restaurant owners] can choose to actually contribute capital for the build out, or they can say, ‘hey we don’t have that much money’ and we’ll front that and they will pay a slightly higher commission.”

While the first store is built around an open plan layout, future Deliveroo Edition’s will focus on pod spaces — kind of like a dorm — with restaurants having their own space to cook for customers under one roof.

“[The chefs] are employed by the restaurant,” Shu said.

“I think the quality will be much better [from Deliveroo Editions] than if you were to get delivery from a normal restaurant.

“Everything here is geared specifically for delivery. You don’t have a front of house servicing customers and also delivering orders at the same time. So on average deliveries from Editions are about five minutes faster than our average delivery.”

The model is already operating in the UK, Europe and Asia.

According to Deliveroo Australia general manager Levi Aron, around 50-70 sites are planned to be rolled out across Australia from next year.

The first Melbourne store will be open for trade from today.

The reporter travelled as a guest of Deliveroo.