The Cuff’s quiet neighbor
MrBeast isn’t coming to 13th Ave — it’s already here. But more like it will be here soon. (Image: MrBeast Burger)
From vaccination requirements to takeout and delivery, the pandemic has, of course, radically reshaped Capitol Hill’s food and drink landscape. One new major land deal and restaurant project shows just how permanently the scene has changed and how profitable the new “ghost kitchen” era could be for the right players.
The Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce reports “the old industrial building at 1525 13th Ave” has sold for $2.3 million.
The buyer? KBD Holdings, a company destined to create a project in the heart of Capitol Hill next door to legendary neighborhood leather bar The Cuff that will attract thousands of customers, serve them in an unholy alliance with the major delivery services like Uber Eats and Grubhub, and generate near constant buzz from Instagram and Seattle Eater without ever seating a diner.
According to permits filed with the City of Seattle, the secretive California company is planning a full overhaul of the building to create a 6,000-square-foot “commercial catering kitchen project” with multiple units for “food processing and craft work.”
The project is a ghost kitchen, a growing phenomenon in the industry that capitalizes on the pandemic surge in demand for delivery by creating high-buzz concepts and celebrity driven menus that can be replicated and introduced for limited times and in select cities, and easily swapped out for the next new thing as buzz and hype fades.
The trend has also been called virtual kitchens, shadow kitchens, dark kitchens, or cloud kitchens.
KBD Holdings officials including owner Bill Dinino and the Seattle project’s development manager George Hajjar have not responded to CHS inquiries to learn more about their plans for 13th Ave. A phone number provided by Hajjar to the city for the public permitting process has been disconnected.
But the company is a big deal. Here’s what they built in Vegas in 2020:
In April of 2020, the building was acquired by KBD Holdings, a Los-Angeles-based real estate firm that owns over $5 billion in assets across the globe. For the past several months, they have been moving businesses into their cloud kitchen spaces at 333 W St. Louis Ave., where many of the brands plan to offer takeout and delivery services. In addition to the aforementioned restaurants, the other businesses awaiting permits include Darla’s Southern Cajun Bistro, Royal’s Burgers, Veggy Street and Good Kitchen. Each tenant will open on their own schedule, but it appears that many of them are well on their way to open before spring.
Meanwhile, another ghost kitchen variant example is the popular MrBeast Burger which has come to Seattle and rotated through available commercial kitchen space in markets across the country by leveraging a celebrity social media following into a massive delivery only burger business.
On 13th Ave, permits indicate plans for space for a dozen or more concepts to spin through the facility.
Like food and drink, the commercial leasing industry is also shifting. The coming ghost kitchen has a twin, of sorts, in Mosaic Salon and Spa Studios, a facilities management concept that leases studios to salon and spa business owners and stylists and overhauled the former Urban Outfitters on Broadway into a new facility with 58 small studios. The neighborhood’s market for office space, meanwhile, has also been reshaped with the arrival of WeWork on 11th Ave.
The new 13th Ave project will mean changes for the 1929-era building currently leased as laboratory space by Diagnostic Cytogenetics, a provider of chromosome analysis services. It will also change the course of development for the property that was marketed with a plan for a seven-story, 80-unit apartment building.
And, of course, it means changes for food and drink on Capitol Hill. As the latest wave of development slows to a trickle, new Capitol Hill restaurants in new Capitol Hill spaces have become a rarity. This mid-September week, CHS reported on Kobuta and Ookami Katsu and Sake House, the first restaurant to open in new construction on Capitol Hill this year.
As for the KBD Holdings project on 13th Ave, construction is on hold. Permit applications started in April are still in review as a COVID-hobbled City Hall tries to keep up with the rush of projects hoping to dig in around the city.
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Any info on the seemingly vacated Auto Accessories & Parts building across the street at 1520 13th Ave?
A market hall would be a better addition to the neighborhood than a ghost kitchen. They should at least make the outdoor space that is currently parking into an outdoor seating area with a bar for people that want to pick up their order in person and eat in a social environment.
Great! You should build one.
Nah, that would require doing something. Much easier just to spout off about what “should be”.
I’m sure if they had the time and financing they would. Plus, a person isn’t allowed to express their personal opinion on the open comments of a community blog without a snarky reply? Interesting.
A market hall is not a new idea. I can 100% guarantee you that the investors have no interest in it.
A wonderful idea. Do you know how difficult the permitting for what you suggest is? It’s hard enough to get the commercial kitchen permit approved, let alone a liquor license and a restaurant license too on top of it for serving customers on site.
It would be great if these ghost kitchen concepts offered pickup windows. A lot of people live close enough that they don’t want to pay like 3 different charges, fees, Seattle mandate taxes, plus a tip, to have some guy in a Prius drive their meal two and a half blocks. It’s just not that valuable of a service when you live close to the kitchen.
Actually, I have found it better to not mix ghost kitchen with virtual kitchen, etc. Virtual kitchens can be located by the customer for pickup whereas ghost kitchens only deliver food, no pick up. Also ghost kitchen typically means its one big kitchen making multiple menus. Virtual and cloud kitchens are actual restaurants independently owned inside a shared facility.
Travis Kalanick