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Check the address of the takeaway you just ordered your New Year takeaway from - then pop it into Google street view.

If it shows you a unit in an industrial estate instead of the customer-facing store with a counter you were expecting, then the chances are that you've just ordered your food from a dark kitchen.

Dark kitchens, also known as ghost and cloud kitchens, are private, often large-scale industrial kitchens which produce food exclusively for online delivery, and they're becoming more and more prevalent in the UK. They allow catering firms to produce a large number of orders from a commercial kitchen that is far removed from the traditional takeaway environment.

Thanks to apps like JustEat and Deliveroo, the food delivery industry is growing rapidly, and dark kitchens are a way to keep up with demand. In London, kitchens have popped up in shipping containers under motorway bridges, and in other unusual locations too.

Edinburgh entrepreneur Shaf Rasul spotted this trend and decided to get in on the action by launching his very own dark kitchen in the Scottish capital, called Crowd Kitchens.

These ready-to-use commercial kitchens have no signage, no front-of-house staff and no sit-in tables; they are for businesses making food exclusively for delivery.

There will be 12 kitchens available to rent by the hour or day, all under one roof in the former Shapes warehouse in the capital's Sighthill.

Although still viewed with some suspicion from customers, dark kitchens have been able to reduce rent and labour costs over a traditional brick-and-mortar location, while also more efficiently managing customers’ requirements for deliveries.

(Image: http://www.shafrasul.com/)

Shaf said: "Crowd Kitchens has been a project of mine that has been bubbling away for a while. I've seen how this type of business partnership between restaurants and delivery apps has been growing in places like America and China and I'm certain it will be a success here too.

"If you are an established restaurant, you might already do home delivery. But doing that from your current premises interferes with your busy serving times. Having a dedicated kitchen simply for delivery means food can be prepared far more efficiently. This means more of it, more deliveries and more profits.

"Crowd Kitchens is perfect for a start-up business too because they can be up and running in a fraction of the time it takes to set up a restaurant. The cost of using Crowd Kitchens will be far less than signing a lease or mortgaging premises."

So there you have it: if the food is good and well prepared, do you mind that it's come from a dark kitchen? Or would you prefer to get your New Year scran from a traditional restaurant instead? Let us know in the comments!

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