Built for the delivery-only operating model that defines ghost kitchens and virtual brands — multi-brand from one kitchen, third-party-marketplace integration without tablet sprawl, and the per-channel margin reporting that decides which brands actually make money.
Virtual brands per kitchen
Multi-brand ghost kitchens operate distinct concepts from one line.
Third-party commission rate
Per-order, varies by marketplace and market. The margin-eating reality of the model.
Average ghost-kitchen order ticket
Delivery-only; smaller than dine-in ticket because no beverage/dessert attach.
A ghost kitchen runs 3–10 distinct virtual brands from a single physical kitchen — different menus on DoorDash, Uber Eats, Grubhub, and direct ordering channels, all coming out of the same line. Katalyst handles the operational complexity without making the kitchen team juggle five different ticket systems.
All brand orders flow into a unified kitchen display sorted by promise time. The cook line doesn't need to know which brand the ticket is for — they cook what the screen shows them, in priority order.
Each virtual brand has its own menu structure, pricing, and channel availability. Update the Mexican brand without touching the burger brand without touching the wing brand.
P&L by brand, channel, and combination — the burger brand on DoorDash is profitable; the burger brand on Uber Eats isn't. The data tells you which brands to scale and which to kill.
Three brands using the same chicken supply — inventory deducts correctly regardless of which brand sold which dish. No double-counting, no manual reconciliation.
Ghost kitchens depend on third-party marketplace channels for the majority of revenue. Katalyst's marketplace integration eliminates the tablet stack and gives operators control over capacity, pricing, and pause/unpause across every channel from one screen.
DoorDash, Uber Eats, Grubhub, ezCater all integrate directly into the POS. No more 4-tablet shelf with orders coming in 4 separate places; everything flows into one queue.
Kitchen overwhelmed? Pause new orders across all marketplaces simultaneously. Resume the same way. No more pausing 4 tablets individually and missing one.
Real cost of each channel surfaced in reports. DoorDash 25% commission, Uber Eats 28%, Grubhub 22% — see effective contribution per order per channel and decide which volume is worth keeping.
Branded online ordering on your own domain, zero commission. Best-margin channel; the operational strategy is shifting repeat customers from marketplace to direct via loyalty incentives.
Ghost kitchens have the worst per-order economics of any restaurant model — and also the lowest fixed costs. There's no dining room, no front-of-house labor, no beverage program, no host stand. The kitchen runs lean; the labor is back-of-house only. That structural efficiency is what makes the model viable in spite of the 18–30% marketplace commissions that eat into every order.
The first-order math operators get wrong: 'we'll just put up more brands and capture more orders.' Adding a brand doesn't automatically add margin. A burger brand at $14 ticket with 32% food cost and a 25% marketplace commission produces $4.20 of contribution per order. A wing brand at $22 ticket with 28% food cost and a 22% commission produces $11.00 of contribution. Both brands look the same on volume reports; the wing brand makes 2.6× the margin. Operators that don't run per-brand per-channel P&L don't know which of their brands are actually profitable and end up subsidising losers with winners.
Channel mix shift is the highest-leverage strategic move. A ghost kitchen that does 80% third-party and 20% direct loses more margin to commissions than a kitchen with the inverse split. Building direct ordering volume — through SEO on your branded sites, loyalty programs that incentivise repeat-direct, in-package marketing inserts pointing customers to your direct app — shifts the channel mix over time. Operators that grow direct to 35–45% of total volume see contribution margin improvements of 4–8%, which on a $1.2M kitchen is $48K–$96K per year.
The operational risk in a ghost kitchen is overcommitment during peak. When all 7 marketplaces are firing simultaneously plus your direct channel, the kitchen queue grows faster than the line can produce. The failure mode: accept all orders, miss promise times, get flagged on the marketplaces, refund ratio climbs, marketplace algorithm punishes you on visibility, volume drops. The right move is capacity throttling at the POS — pause new orders across all channels when queue depth exceeds threshold, then unpause when the line catches up. The kitchens that survive long-term run their capacity discipline as tightly as a Michelin restaurant runs its course pacing.
Concrete examples of how ghost kitchen operators use Katalyst in the real workflows their concept actually runs on.
Burger brand, wing brand, Mexican brand, breakfast-all-day brand. 6pm: 47 orders in queue across 4 channels (DoorDash 28, Uber Eats 12, Grubhub 5, direct 2). KDS shows a unified queue sorted by promise time. Cook line works tickets in order; doesn't matter which brand or channel. Kitchen pause kicks in automatically at 52 tickets in queue.
Monthly report: burger brand $48K revenue, $9K contribution. Wing brand $32K revenue, $13K contribution. Mexican brand $22K revenue, $6K contribution. Vegan-bowl brand $18K revenue, $1.5K contribution. Decision: kill the vegan-bowl brand; reallocate menu real estate to a second wing variant. Margin per kitchen-hour improves 18% the following month.
QR code on every delivery bag points to the kitchen's direct ordering app with a 15%-off first-direct-order code. Loyalty program credits 1.5× points on direct orders vs. marketplace. Over 90 days: direct channel grows from 12% to 26% of total volume. Contribution margin per order improves 22%.
Most POS vendors quote a bundled processing rate and hope you don't read the statements. Send us yours — we'll show you the line-item difference Katalyst Payments would make on the same volume. No demo required first.
24-hour response · No commitment · Confidential. We work off your real merchant data, not a sales-pitch estimate.
Your last 3 months of merchant statements
Or just your effective rate and monthly volume — we'll work with what you have.
We map the same volume onto Katalyst Payments
Interchange-plus pricing, no bundled markup, no surprise tier shifts.
You see the exact monthly + annual difference
Average client saves $55K+/year. We show you the math before you commit to anything.
Katalyst was built in 2015 by restaurateurs Dan Roland, Cole Dillon, and Scott Bleczinski — operators of a Massachusetts restaurant portfolio worth $15M+. Every feature exists because we needed it in our own dining rooms first.
Read our storySaved per year, on average
Increase in guest count
Increase in revenue
KPIs tracked
Yes. Each brand has its own menu, pricing, and channel availability configured in the POS. Orders from all brands flow into a single unified KDS sorted by promise time. The cook line works tickets in queue order regardless of brand. Reporting separates revenue, food cost, and contribution by brand so you can see which brands are actually profitable.
No. Direct API integrations with the major marketplaces (DoorDash, Uber Eats, Grubhub, ezCater) push orders straight into the POS. The KDS shows them alongside direct-channel orders in unified queue. Pause/unpause across all channels in one tap. The 4-tablet shelf goes away.
Per-brand-per-channel P&L reporting is the operational core. The system tracks revenue, food cost, and channel commission for every order; reports break out contribution margin by brand × channel. A brand that's profitable on Uber Eats but losing money on DoorDash (different commission structures) shows up clearly in the data. Use the data to decide which brand × channel combinations to scale and which to kill.
Three plays compound: branded delivery packaging with QR codes to your direct app; first-direct-order discount codes (15–20% off); and loyalty bonuses that pay extra points on direct orders vs. marketplace orders. Most operators that scale direct from 10% to 35%+ over 12 months use this exact combination. The contribution margin improvement from the channel shift typically pays for the loyalty program 4–8×.
A 30-minute walkthrough of Katalyst tuned to your concept.
