A ghost kitchen is a restaurant with no dining room: it cooks for delivery and pickup only, often for several brands sold on the delivery apps. A commissary kitchen is a licensed base for businesses that sell somewhere else: food trucks park, fill water and dump waste there, and trucks, caterers and makers prep and store food there. The FDA Food Code, which most health departments adopt, treats them differently because they do different jobs. The ghost kitchen is a food establishment in its own right, since food handed to a delivery service still counts as food served to the consumer, so it's licensed like a restaurant. The commissary is what the Food Code calls a servicing area for mobile units, and health departments often require food trucks to have one, sometimes with a signed letter. The practical difference is how the space is used: a ghost kitchen runs one operation's line all day; a commissary is shared by many users, in hours or memberships. In the example below, a food truck commissary weighs turning one of its two kitchen lines into a ghost kitchen station.
The short version
- Ghost kitchen: delivery and pickup only, no dining room, often several brands.
- Commissary: a licensed base where food trucks, caterers and makers prep, store and service.
- The Food Code counts delivery as serving the consumer, so a ghost kitchen is licensed like a restaurant.
- A commissary is a servicing area for mobile units; many health departments require trucks to have one.
- Ghost kitchens need a dedicated line and room for drivers; commissaries need booking, storage and truck hookups.
- A ghost station pays steady rent; commissary memberships and hours fill a shared space.
- TaroStack keeps each user's goods as their own, for kitchens that hold members' stock. More below.
Side by side
| Ghost kitchen | Commissary kitchen | |
|---|---|---|
| Who uses it | A delivery-only restaurant, or several brands | Food trucks, caterers, carts, small makers |
| What happens there | Cooking orders for delivery and pickup | Prep, storage, cleaning, water and waste for trucks |
| Health code role | A food establishment, licensed like a restaurant | A servicing area or licensed base for mobile units |
| How space is sold | A dedicated station, monthly rent | Memberships, hourly kitchen time, storage shelves |
| What it needs | A full line, hood, cold storage, a pickup spot for drivers | Bookings, shared storage, truck pads, dump station |
A ghost kitchen's own license is in ghost kitchen license, and what a commissary must offer trucks in food truck commissary requirements.
The rules
| Rule | Where |
|---|---|
| Servicing area | An operating base a mobile food establishment returns to regularly for cleaning, waste, water, ice and boarding food (Food Code 2022, 1-201.10) |
| Food establishment | An operation that prepares or serves food and relinquishes it to the consumer directly or through a delivery service (Food Code 2022, 1-201.10) |
Your health department enforces its own version and decides what a commissary must provide. This is general information, not legal advice.
An example: a commissary weighs a ghost station
Mobile Bay Commissary, a made-up food truck commissary in Mobile, Alabama, has 24 truck pads, a licensed kitchen with two lines, a walk-in and dry storage. It sells memberships to trucks at $650 a month and kitchen time at $26 an hour, about 400 hours a month across both lines. A delivery brand offered $2,400 a month to have one line to itself, every day.
| Now | With one line as a ghost station | |
|---|---|---|
| Truck memberships | $15,600 | $15,600 |
| Kitchen hours sold | 400 h, $10,400 | 360 h on one line, $9,360 |
| Ghost station rent | $2,400 | |
| Extra costs | $300 a month more cleaning and utilities | |
| A month | $26,000 | $27,060 |
One line can sell about 360 hours a month at the commissary's hours, so the 40 hours it would lose cost $1,040, and the ghost station still comes out about $1,060 ahead. The catch is the busy mornings: trucks prepping before lunch would all share one line. The commissary agreed to the station on a six-month term, with the brand's hood cleaning and a separate pickup door for drivers in the lease. Its full year's numbers are in commissary kitchen business plan.
Get the calculator
Download the ghost kitchen and commissary calculator. One sheet: memberships and their price, kitchen hours sold and the rate, storage, and any ghost station rents with their extra costs, for now and for a change you're weighing; each month's total and the difference fill in. It's an ordinary Excel file with no macros, and it works in Google Sheets, LibreOffice and Numbers.
Where this stops working
The money works out on a sheet. Running it means two dozen trucks' food in one walk-in, a delivery brand's stock on its own shelves, and every member wanting to know what's theirs.
How TaroStack does it
TaroStack keeps a kitchen's members' goods as their own, received, counted and released.
Keep only. A shared kitchen or commissary that keeps members' goods receives, counts and releases them as the member's own; nothing has to be made.
Kept apart. Each member's goods sit apart from the kitchen's own stock, left out of its stock value, and go out only on a release to that member.
A monthly statement. Each member gets a statement of their goods by lot: opening, received, released, counted and closing, with the month's charges.
| The job | Shared walk-in | In TaroStack |
|---|---|---|
| Whose food is on which shelf | Tape and a marker | Each member's own goods |
| What a member took out | Nobody wrote it down | A release to the member |
| What each member holds | A count by hand | A monthly statement by lot |
Keeping goods for members is on Standard, at $99 a month. The first 30 days are free, with no credit card. If you'd like a hand setting up, ask, and we'll do it with you.