Cloud-Kitchens: Value Creation Through Co-Location

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Rout, Arun; Dawande, Milind; Janakiraman, Ganesh
• 署名单位: University of Texas System; University of Texas Dallas
• 刊物名称: PRODUCTION AND OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1059-1478
• DOI: 10.1177/10591478231224950
• 发表日期: 2024
• 页码: 512-529
• 关键词: Disruptive business models; cloud kitchens; food-delivery platforms

摘要

Cloud Kitchens are delivery-only facilities that house multiple restaurants. Food-delivery platforms operate such kitchens to exploit two advantages: (a) Location advantage, arising due to a cloud-kitchen's central location-this enables lower delivery times to customers. (b) Consolidation advantage, which accrues when multiple restaurants choose to co-locate at the cloud kitchen-this enables the platform to use a common pool of delivery drivers, thereby reducing costs. However, a cloud-kitchen's eventual impacts on both the restaurants and the platform are intricately connected through their respective decisions-namely, the restaurants' location decisions and the platform's delivery capacity and delivery time. We examine conditions under which a cloud kitchen simultaneously benefits the primary stakeholders: delivery platform, restaurants, and customers. Our game-theoretic analysis considers two restaurants and a delivery platform. The restaurants simultaneously decide whether to stay at their initial (extreme) locations or relocate to a centrally located cloud kitchen. The platform decides the driver headcount and the delivery times for customers. In line with industry trends, we show that as population density increases beyond a threshold, the restaurants co-locating at the cloud kitchen is first a Pareto-dominant equilibrium and then the unique equilibrium. The platform and customers also prefer this equilibrium, leading to a win-win-win for the stakeholders. A cloud-kitchen's benefit to the platform further increases as the drivers' operational environment becomes more constrained, i.e. drivers' carry-limit and speed decrease, and driver cost increases.