I was at a friend’s place for drinks a couple of weeks ago when amid all the general discussion the topic of cloud kitchens came up. A couple of our friends who weren’t present had just launched an online-only delivery restaurant (i.e. one without a physical storefront, but with a brand presence on social media and/or aggregators like Swiggy or Zomato) and were already in the process of launching another. I made my opinion known – that I didn’t think the delivery-only kitchen model was as hyper-scalable as people thought – and got a couple of incredulous questions: “So what, are cloud kitchens a fad?”, “Is everyone else wrong about the explosive growth we are about to see in the space?”