State College Restaurateur Boosts Business with Ghost Kitchen Offerings

The COVID-19 pandemic forced many restaurants, both locally and around the world, to pivot to inventive solutions and new services in order to make up lost revenue from the lack of in-restaurant dining.

Some restaurants began offering delivery for the first time, while others, like State College serial restaurateur Hitham Hiyajneh, took advantage of an accelerating dining trend: ghost kitchens.

A ghost kitchen is essentially a restaurant brand that has no physical location. Instead, it uses current restaurants’ kitchens and offers delivery and takeout-only options in partnership with that restaurant. The brand provides marketing and the menu, while the restaurant provides the ingredients, tools, physical location and labor.

But while ghost kitchens have gained popularity primarily over the last year, for Hiyajneh, the concept is nothing new. 

“We’ve been doing ghost kitchens for three years,” he says. “I didn’t start just yesterday. I was one of the first guys to do it in this area. We have almost 11 restaurants including ghost kitchens.”

Among Hiyajneh’s most well-known downtown State College restaurants are Yallah Taco and Yallah Burrito, but he also operates a taco-centric ghost kitchen called Taco ’Bout It. Other ghost kitchens that Hiyajneh operates out of his existing restaurant spaces include Badass Lions Burgers and Wing Squad, as well as upcoming Italian, Indian and Whole30 concepts. 

Some of Hiyajneh’s ghost kitchens are celebrity-branded, which means even more impactful marketing. These include MrBeast Burger, created by YouTube personality MrBeast, and Tyga Bites, created by rapper Tyga.

“We’re killing it with MrBeast Burger right now,” Hiyajneh says. “We can’t keep up. It’s busy all day long and they’re doing all the advertising for us.” 

The extra business has meant Hiyajneh was able to retain all of his employees throughout the pandemic, despite loss of business at his traditional restaurants. 

Items from the ghost kitchens can be ordered for pickup or via delivery services like Grubhub, with Hiyajneh saying that about 95% of his business for the ghost kitchens is currently delivery. However, he’s considering innovating his operations further to cut down on delivery costs.

“We’ve been doing delivery over the last 11 to 12 years, but… I’m the type of guy who’s always ahead of the curve,” he says. “I just listened to a seminar about how they’re doing delivery in North Carolina and South Carolina with a company out of Israel using drones. They take the food and deliver it to the person’s backyard… In the future, I’m going to buy a bunch of drones from this company and they will deliver. They charge me a $5 fee per delivery and I don’t need the drivers anymore…” 

The drones are only able to deliver within a few miles’ radius of a restaurant and only to private homes or backyards, not apartments, but for Hiyajneh, the tech solution is just another piece of the future of the restaurant industry.

He’s also working on a way to allow customers to order from multiple ghost kitchens at once. “So instead of paying five different delivery fees, you pay one delivery fee and get five different meals from five different locations,” he explains.

To Hiyajneh’s knowledge, he’s the only ghost kitchen operator in State College and he says the risk has been well worth it. 

“MrBeast Burger and Taco ’Bout It are our most popular [ghost kitchens], with MrBeast Burger at No. 1,” Hiyajneh says. “[The brand] does a really good job marketing and the guy is really popular. Everyone knows MrBeast and the product is very simple and reasonably priced. It’s not over-priced… and we’re making more profits this way, because my fixed costs are already there. I’m already paying my employees. I’m already paying rent. We did almost 1,400 or 1,500 orders for MrBeast this month.”