Exploring the scale and scope of dark kitchens in the north of England: addressing food safety and public health priorities

Dark kitchens (DKs) are delivery-only ‘virtual’ commercial spaces that do not have a customer-facing storefront and operate via third-party platforms (e.g., Just Eat) with potential for large geographical reach (Rinaldi et al., 2022). They are a contemporary addition to the UK food environment, finding popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic (Keeble et al., 2023).

Operating at low-cost within urban environments with easy access to consumers and relative stability (e.g., in light of COVID-19), DKs offer a lucrative business model (Souza et al., 2022; Food Standards Agency, 2021) within a rapidly growing market (Statista, 2022). However, DKs are particularly difficult to monitor and regulate (Food Standards Agency, 2021), as the number, type and impact is largely unknown.

The low nutritional quality of foods offered by these businesses (Keeble et al., 2020; Fernandez and Raine, 2021), and potential for poor food safety practices (Crawford and Benjamin, 2019) are cause for concern, and best practice is yet to be established. The growth of DKs presents additional complexity when evaluating their impact on the place-based food environment and potential impact on health (Keeble et al., 2020; Rinaldi et al., 2022), compounded by lack of clarity of how many exist and how to define them.

This reflects the range of business types and sizes, including small ad-hoc operators, potentially transient and less visible to local authorities (LAs) than conventional food businesses (Food Standards Agency, 2021). The very nature of DKs challenges LAs to identify, manage and ensure effective regulatory control, even if appropriate regulatory frameworks exist.

As such, there is a need to understand the complexity and establish clear frameworks for best practice to identify and manage these establishments. Over the six-month funding period, the project will take a whole systems approach to:

1) Work with LA (including planning, environmental health and public health departments) to understand the scale and type of DKs. 2) Explore current approaches and best practice by LA to identify and manage DKs.

3) Consider local authority, business owner and consumer definitions and perceptions of DKs and the regulatory environment.

4) Co-develop frameworks with stakeholders for the identification and management of DKs against public health priorities and environmental health agendas.

The proposed mixed-methods project will understand current policy, practice and behaviour around DKs in two regions in the North of England. Large-scale questionnaires will establish consumer knowledge and engagement with DKs; this will be explored in greater detail with semi-structured interviews. Online questionnaires and focus groups with public health, environmental health and planning teams within LAs will explore current approaches to identifying and managing DKs in line with existing LA health and planning priorities.

Interviews will be conducted with DK business owners and managers to establish: business model; food safety, hygiene status and practices; and, food provision and experiences with regulatory processes. These prior steps will allow stakeholders from all participant groups (citizen, LA and business) to contribute to co-production workshops underpinned by AI methodology, to co-develop a framework to guide practice and policy.

It is planned that this work will be disseminated to LAs and through the publication of peer-reviewed journal articles.