Ask five ghost kitchen operators what it cost to open and you'll get five numbers between $40,000 and $105,000. Most of that spread comes down to three decisions: a rented commissary or your own box, used or new equipment, and whether you actually funded the months before break-even. Below is the whole budget, line by line, with the ranges operators report.
Space: $8,000–18,000
You've got two paths. A shared commissary or kitchen-as-a-service slot costs a deposit plus monthly rent, gets you cooking within a few weeks, and leaves most of the permitting with the landlord. That's the low end of the range. Your own leased box gives you control and cheaper rent per order once volume is there, but the deposit is heavier, and any build-out (ventilation, grease trap, floor drains) can add five figures fast. For a first location, take the commissary. You're paying to be wrong about the neighborhood cheaply.
Equipment: $15,000–40,000
A full hot line bought new — range, fryer, a hood if the space doesn't have one, refrigeration, prep tables — runs toward $40k. The same setup used or refurbished comes in around $15–20k, and in delivery nobody sees your kitchen anyway. Buy used for anything mechanical and simple: tables, shelving, sinks, gas ranges. Save the new-equipment budget for the things whose failure stops everything, like refrigeration. And build the list around your launch menu. Every appliance bought for a dish you might add someday just sits there as dead capital.
Licenses, permits, insurance: $2,000–6,000
Business license, food-service permit, food-handler certificates, general liability and workers' comp premiums. The range depends almost entirely on your city and whether the commissary's permits cover part of it. Budget the high end and hope to be pleasantly surprised. A permit delay costs more in dead rent than the permit itself.
We'll walk through the tech line and the channel plan on your numbers — 30 minutes, no slides.
Tech stack: $2,000–8,000
A ghost kitchen is mostly a digital storefront with a stove attached, so this small line matters more than its size suggests. It covers your ordering channel (an ordering website and a branded app), plus order management screens, courier dispatch, and integrations that pull marketplace orders onto one screen instead of a shelf of buzzing tablets. Where you land in the range depends on setup fees and the first months of subscription on one platform, versus stitching separate point tools together.
Price is the least interesting thing about this line. Launch marketplace-only to save it, and you hand 30–40% of every order to marketplaces like DoorDash and Uber Eats for good, with no channel of your own to move regulars onto. We lay out the full case in our ghost kitchen business model breakdown. The short of it: this $2–8k buys the margin the whole model is supposed to produce.
Packaging and smallwares: $2,000–5,000
Containers that hold heat and survive a courier's top box, bags, labels, cutlery, and the pans and gastronorms inside the kitchen. Test all of it against your actual menu before you order in bulk. A container that leaks under your bestseller pays you back in refunds and one-star reviews, which is the expensive way to learn your packaging is wrong.
Launch marketing: $3,000–8,000
With no walk-by traffic, day-one demand has to be bought or borrowed: local ads aimed at your delivery zone, a first-order offer, and food photos that do the selling on screen. Put the photos first. Every channel reuses them, and weak ones drag conversion down everywhere. Once orders start coming, move retention off paid media and onto channels you own. Cashback plus push and SMS campaigns cost from about $0.01 per message on Twilio-class SMS pricing (push is free) and keep people reordering without a standing ad bill.
Working capital: $10,000–20,000
Most ghost kitchens lose money in month one, and marketplace payouts land on a delay while rent and payroll don't wait. The budgeting mistake that sinks operators is a familiar one: they fund the build perfectly and the first 90 days barely at all. Keep back enough to cover two to three months of fixed costs. If the numbers don't fit with this line intact, cut equipment instead. This is the last line you touch.
What this budget deliberately leaves out
Three costs sit outside the startup total because they scale with sales rather than with opening day. Your first inventory order is real cash, usually a few thousand dollars, but it turns back into revenue within weeks. If you run your own delivery fleet instead of leaning on marketplace drivers, courier wages and vehicle costs become an operating expense from day one, and choosing between the two models is a whole decision of its own. Marketplace commissions are sneakier: no one sends you a bill to approve, which is precisely why they get left out of the model. All three belong in your monthly P&L forecast rather than the opening budget.
Do this next
Copy the seven lines above into a spreadsheet with three columns: low, high, and yours. Get real local quotes for space and equipment, since those are the two lines geography moves the most. If your total comes out above what you can fund with working capital left intact, drop equipment to used and space to a commissary before you touch marketing or tech. You can upgrade the fryer next quarter. You can't go back and win the customers that an under-promoted launch never reached.
Ordering site, app, kitchen screens, dispatch, and marketing tools — one platform behind 3M+ orders.