Why own a restaurant if you can rent a kitchen?

Rawan | Nov 30, 2025Nov 28, 2025

LESSON OVERVIEW

The main objectives of this ESL lesson on ghost kitchens are to:

• talk about food ordering services and restaurants;
• review phrases for discussing food-service topics;
• watch video excerpts about the cloud kitchens business model.

With this lesson, students discuss ordering food, explore statistics about food delivery and share their opinions and experiences. They work with vocabulary related to restaurants and food ordering services (e.g. customer loyalty, dining space, online orders) and talk about restaurant and delivery challenges. Students learn the concept of ‘ghost kitchens’, watch parts of a video about that topic and debate the future of delivery-only restaurants. 

WARM-UP AND VOCABULARY

This ESL lesson on ghost kitchens starts with a warm-up. Students discuss questions about ordering food. After that, they read some statistics about food delivery in the US and answer questions about their experiences, opinions and preferences. Moving on, students complete gaps with phrases (e.g. food quality, kitchen equipment, delivery drivers) to create challenges that a restaurant might meet (e.g. kitchen equipment breaks down and needs to be fixed very often). Following that, they rate each challenge from the previous task as very big, not very big or small. Students explain their choice and say what the restaurant manager could do in each situation.

VIDEO AND DISCUSSION

In this part of this ESL lesson on ghost kitchens, students give examples for categories related to eating out, kitchens and food delivery (e.g. kitchen equipment, things restaurants do to win customer loyalty). They then read the definition of ‘ghost kitchens’ and talk about points related to that type of restaurant. Afterwards, students watch part of a video (from 00:45 to 02:27) about ghost kitchens and tick the ideas that are mentioned. Moving on, they watch the second part of the video (from 02:44 to 03.23) and choose the business model of the company described in it. Following that, students discuss questions about the future of delivery-only restaurants.

HOMEWORK/REVISION

This ESL lesson on ghost kitchens also includes an additional task that you can use as homework or revision. In the task, students look at comments and complete gaps. They then match the beginnings with the endings to finish the remarks. The task is available in the teacher’s version of the worksheet. You can print it and hand it out to your students. It’s also included in the e-lesson plan.

WORKSHEETS

3

0