Cloud kitchen · Guide Updated August 2026

How a New Cloud Kitchen Got 100+ Orders in Its First Month

A ghost kitchen does not need a commercial lease, a big team, or a famous name to get real traction fast. Glen Murray, co-owner of Buzzy Now Leonardo’s in Pili, Camarines Sur in the Philippines, proved that by hitting over 100 orders in her very first month, operating entirely out of her family home with inherited kitchen equipment.

Her story is full of wins, honest mistakes, and lessons every new cloud kitchen operator needs to hear before they open the app and start cooking.

Who Is Glen, and Why Did She Start a Cloud Kitchen?

Glen spent years working as an IT specialist while running a small mobile eatery on the side. When she got sick with lupus in 2019, she moved back to her home province to recover. When the pandemic hit, she needed a way to rebuild income for herself and her family. Her brother had lost his job. She had dependents to support. A cloud kitchen was the path forward.

She was already familiar with delivery apps from her time in the city, so she knew the model. The difference this time was the location. She was now in a province where delivery services were still pioneering. That geography turned out to be a serious advantage.

How Did She Get Her First 100+ Orders?

Glen started by announcing her operation on social media. That was it. No paid advertising. No grand launch event. She told people she was open, and orders came in.

What she did not expect was that her delivery app partner delayed their launch by one to two weeks after her planned opening. Rather than wait, she and her family cooked and hand-delivered orders themselves. It was exhausting, but she did not lose momentum.

She also brought on on-call riders. When riders approached her during the pandemic looking for extra income, she gave them the delivery charge plus a 5 percent commission on sales. That incentive gave them a reason to advertise the business themselves.

The menu she built was personal and specific. She offered Spanish, Asian, and Filipino dishes including kare-kare, pinapaitan, CC (a pork eardrum dish with sour acidic sauce), albondigas, and chicken wings with scratch-made sauces she formulated herself. Her bestsellers were the chicken wings. Every sauce, every recipe, came from her own kitchen.

By the end of month one, she had sold 105 items across roughly 22 customers, with repeat orders already coming in.

What Did Her Startup Cost?

This is where Glen’s situation stands out. Her mother had passed away years earlier and left behind a full set of kitchen equipment. Glen inherited all of it. Her mother’s kitchen was the workspace. A long prep table, chairs, a rectangular dining table for packaging, and inherited cookware. That was the entire setup.

She paid no commercial rent. She applied for the required licenses and passed a government sanitation inspection, which included an in-person visit to her home. In the Philippines, you can legally operate a cloud kitchen from a licensed home kitchen. Those legal and compliance costs did come out of her early profits, which contributed to her overhead surprise at the end of the month. But the capital required to start was minimal compared to opening any kind of traditional food business.

For context, if you are planning a ghost kitchen in the United States in 2026, budget roughly $208,000 to open (range of $156,000 to $260,000), and have about $291,000 in accessible cash before you sign any lease agreement. Glen’s home-based setup avoided that cost entirely, which is exactly why her model scaled as fast as it did.

What Commission Rates Did Her Delivery Apps Charge?

Glen worked with three delivery apps in her province: Mangan PH, Groover Delivery, and Order ML. Mangan PH was the first mover and had the strongest demand, so its terms were different from the other two.

The commission rates for these apps ranged from 8 to 10 percent, inclusive of delivery. She paid no royalty fees on these contracts.

She was clear that the city-based apps operate differently. The more established platforms in major Philippine cities charge around 20 percent commission, and some charge additional royalty fees on top of that, whether or not you make any sales on a given day. Glen had looked into one of those city apps earlier and found it charged 12 percent plus royalties, with the royalty amount unclear upfront.

For comparison, delivery platforms in North America charge anywhere from 20 to 30 percent commission. The lower rates in Glen’s province gave her more margin to work with, which mattered enormously in those early months.

Do You Actually Need to Use Delivery Apps?

You do not have to use a delivery app to launch. Glen’s first weeks proved that. When her app partner delayed, she delivered everything herself.

That said, the delivery apps solved a real operational problem once they launched. They brought in customers who would not have found her through social media alone, they handled the order routing, and their riders came directly to her home for pickup. For a kitchen with no storefront, that visibility matters.

The honest answer is this: apps are a customer acquisition channel, not a business model. Use them to get found. Then build direct relationships with your customers so that repeat orders come back to you through your own channels. Glen used social media for exactly that, building her presence on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube from the beginning.

If you are in a market where commission rates are 20 to 30 percent, you need to build your pricing with that cost included and work to grow your direct order volume over time.

What Pricing Formula Did She Use?

Glen studied her competitors before setting prices. She noticed they were pricing at 2x to 3x the ingredient cost. That means if a chicken dish costs 200 pesos in ingredients, it gets priced at 400 to 600 pesos.

She followed the same approach and adjusted based on what her target customers could actually afford in her area. She knew who her customers were, where they were located, and what their meal budgets looked like. That knowledge shaped every pricing decision.

What she missed initially was overhead. The on-call riders, the extra helpers she had to call in to wash dishes and help prep when volume surged, the licensing and compliance costs, all of it came out of what she thought was profit. Her stepfather, who had an accounting background, flagged it early. By the time she caught it, she had already been through one full month of operations and could see exactly where the money was going.

She fixed it fast, within the first two months. That speed saved the business.

What Were Her Biggest Mistakes?

Three clear ones came out of her first month.

First, she did not account for overhead when setting her prices. She priced based on ingredient cost times a multiplier, which is the right starting point, but did not build in the cost of labor help, riders’ commissions, packaging, and compliance expenses. Revenue looked strong. Profit was a different story.

Second, she underestimated demand. She did not expect the volume she got and had to scramble, calling in extra people to help wash dishes, chop ingredients, and package orders. When a ghost kitchen scales faster than expected, the operational chaos can eat into your margins just as badly as any pricing error.

Third, she spent heavily on licensing and legal compliance during her first month, pulling that money from what she thought were her profits. It was necessary spending, but it was not planned for. Know your compliance costs before you open, not after.

The Bottom Line

Glen Murray launched a ghost kitchen from a home kitchen, inherited her equipment, paid 8 to 10 percent in delivery commissions, and hit over 100 orders in her first month by doing two things well: knowing her customers and showing up online consistently. The early profit margin suffered because overhead was not built into the pricing from the start. She caught it fast and adjusted. That speed of learning is the skill that keeps operators in business. Know your numbers before the first order goes out, not after the first month closes.

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