Owner of Empire State Pizza launches new venture, Guten Burger, with the increasingly popular ghost kitchen concept
Mike Schwartz opens the oven to bake a few kraut burgers while in the kitchen on Tuesday, Mar 9., 2021 at Empire State Pizza, 2700 8th Ave., in Garden City. Schwartz’s new delivery-only restaurant, Guten Burger, will be operating out of the same kitchen. Photo by Joshua Polson.
By Kelly Ragan
Mike Schwartz has a ghost kitchen inside his Empire State Pizza restaurant. But instead of serving spooks, it serves German-style burgers.
Schwartz owns Empire State Pizza, which opened in 2015. On March 1, Schwartz launched Guten Burger – technically a separate restaurant with separate offerings run out of the Empire State Pizza kitchen.
Guten Burger serves kraut burgers, a German-style handheld meat pastry filled with beef, cabbage, and more. Each one is crafted with Empire’s pizza dough and can be paired with mustard, barbeque sauce or ranch (or all three). Schwartz encourages folks to order using online systems such as Doordash rather than order in the store.
In the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic, ghost kitchens have become increasingly popular in the restaurant industry. The weird part? Many of the kitchens offer pickup and delivery only, without the same kind of storefront and dine-in options we’re used to. It’s almost like there’s a ghost in Empire who makes the kraut burgers. The idea, Schwartz said, was to create a dish totally separate from the pizza business, but similar enough that when orders roll in, it won’t be a huge stress on Empire’s staff or cost Schwartz more overhead for a separate storefront.
Golden brown and fresh out of the oven, Mike Schwartz prepares a few of the kraut burgers Tuesday, Mar 9., 2021 at Empire State Pizza, 2700 8th Ave., in Garden City. Photo by Joshua Polson.
“Essentially you’re able to use online ordering platforms to expand your sales without having to open a new restaurant,” Schwartz said.
The concept has been popular in Denver with newcomers ChefReady and NextBite. ChefReady took the concept a step further with a virtual kitchen – essentially functioning as a space with 10 high-tech commercial kitchens available for delivery-only chefs and restaurants. NextBite works as a kind of incubator, developing ghost kitchens then offering them to other restaurants to run within their existing brick-and-mortar buildings.
It’s happening in Greeley, too. For example, if you log onto Doordash and see that you can order from a restaurant in town called It’s Just Wings, you’re ordering from Chili’s.
It can be an efficient way for restaurants to diversify their offerings – the tricky part comes when customers don’t know their ordering from a ghost kitchen.
In Philadelphia, some folks ordered pizza from a seemingly new joint called Pasqually’s Pizza & Wings before they realized the food came from the virtual kitchen of Chuck E. Cheese.
Schwartz said he too encountered a lot of skepticism when he launched the Facebook page for the business and didn’t include an address.
Kraut burgers sit on the counter on Tuesday, Mar 9., 2021 at Empire State Pizza, 2700 8th Ave., in Garden City. Photo by Joshua Polson.
He gets it, he said – people want to know the business is run out of a licensed, up-to-code kitchen that isn’t sketchy.
But he also wants folks to understand Guten Burger is a separate, unique venture.
While it’s been a hard year for the restaurant industry, Schwartz said he still loves what he does.
“First and foremost, I love being able to provide for my family, even if it isn’t always easy,” Schwartz said. “Beyond that, I have a great passion for cooking. It’s my creative outlet.”
For more
For more information, go to https://www.facebook.com/greeleykrautburger.
How to order: Use an app like Doordash or Uber Eats to order online and get kraut burgers delivered.